There is also another disadvantage which the Distributive State has when it is in competition with a Capitalist State, or even a Servile State, and that is _the difficulty of getting a very large number of small owners to put their money together for any great purpose_. The small owner will probably have less opportunities for instruction and judgment than the few directing rich men of a Capitalist or Servile State, and even if he is, on the average, as well educated as these rich men in neighbouring states, it will be more difficult to get a great number of small owners to act together than to persuade a few large owners to act together. Therefore highly Capitalist States, such as England, will be found more enterprising than less Capitalist States in their investments and commerce. They will open up new countries more rapidly, and will get possession of the best markets. Lastly, this disadvantage attaches to the Distributive State--that it is not so easy in it to collect great funds for war or for national defence, or for any other purpose, as it is in a Capitalist or Servile State. You cannot tax a Distributive State as highly as you can tax a Capitalist State. The reason is obvious enough. A family with, say, £400 a year finds it terribly difficult--almost impossible--to pay out £100 a year in taxation. They live on a certain modest scale to which all their lives are fitted, and which does not leave very much margin for taxation. If you have a million such families with a total income of £400 millions you may collect from them, say, a tenth of their wealth in a year--£40 millions--but you will hardly be able to collect a quarter--£100 millions. But another society with exactly the same amount of total wealth, £400 millions a year, only divided into very rich and very poor, a society in which there are, say, 1,000 very rich families with £300,000 a year each, and a million families with rather less than £100 a year each, is in quite a different situation. You need not tax at all the million people with a hundred a year each, but the rich people, who between them have £300,000,000 a year, can easily be taxed a quarter of their whole wealth; for a rich man always has a much larger margin, the loss of which he does not really feel.