There's a powerful myth, promulgated by John Key and David Shearer, and in most of the media. It is that businessmen are "wealth creators". Without them, we're told, there would be no investment, no jobs, an economy in a spiral of decline.
Under feudalism, using the same logic, without the lords there would be no land. The peasants would just float in the air, starving.
What is true in current-day society is that the means of wealth creation are in the hands of a small class of capitalists. They own and control the major means of production-the factories and offices, the roads, railways, docks and airports, and so on.
Often - indeed increasingly, through "privatisation" - they own them privately. Sometimes nation-states own them. In either case, access to and decision-making control over these facilities is out of the hands of the mass of the population.
What about the rest of us? A minority still own the means to make a living-small farmers and shopk…