Tao Te Ching Chapter 75: The Injury of Greed

Three social ills, each traced to the same address. The people are hungry — because those above them consume too much in taxes. The people are difficult to govern — because those above them interfere too much. The people take death lightly — because those above are too eager to enrich their own lives. Where rulers habitually blame the ruled — their laziness, their unruliness, their recklessness — Lao Tzu runs the causality upward: the governed are the mirror of the governing, and desperation at the bottom is manufactured at the top.

The final line pivots from politics to the root appetite: truly, those who do not place excessive value on their own lives are wiser than those who overvalue life. The over-cherished life — the ruler's gilded self-enrichment, but also anyone's anxious self-pampering — is the engine of the whole extraction. A ruling class that grips its own comfort will squeeze everyone beneath it; a person who grips their own advantage will do the same at any scale. Loosen the self-cherishing, the chapter says, and the pressure lifts off everyone downstream.