What's In a Can of Peas?

So what really is in a can of peas? I mean besides, of course, the peas? That's probably the most obvious answer.

Before I go on, did I ever stop to mention in any one of my many ramblings on that I happen to be a bit anal retentive about what I think is always a bigger picture than what we really think about? Better yet, do I really need to mention that—or is that just as obvious as the answer to my original question that what's in a can of peas happens to be well...peas?

Ah heck. Maybe the better word is nuts. Perhaps that's a far more accurate word to describe what my malady happens to be. Without question I am nuts. One very short step from the infamous funny farm, if you really want to know. Anyone who knows me well would be remiss to readily point this out regarding my character.

Anyway, what I'm talking about is jobs. That's what happens to be in a can of peas. Lots and lots of jobs. Because that's how commerce works, of course. A man grows peas and sells those peas to someone who sells them to someone else, and so the wheels of commerce get turning.

Okay, that's rather obvious too.

In what you'll surely agree is an odd sort of a way, I tend to look at a simple can of peas a bit like that old story about the house that Jack built. You remember that old ditty from Mother Goose herself, who by the way happened to have been a rather wise mother actually? "This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the rat that ate the malt..."

And so the story goes. I need not repeat it here. We are all more than familiar with this very old fairy tale from our childhood.

It's of course a story, that much like my can of peas, portrays a continuation of something. An order of things. A beginning to an end which, at the end all seems to wind up right back at the beginning again.

Of course a man grows the peas. But before that a man also builds the plow, and another man produces the fertilizer. A banker gives the man who grows the peas the loan to buy the plow, the seeds, and the fertilizer. Hell, the banker gives a loan for the man to build the farm itself on which he'll grow those peas. And of course someone had to chop down the trees to make the logs that built that farm, and someone had to produce the nails, and the hammer, and, someone had to mine the steel that made the plow, and the machines that made the hammer and the nails, and...

Well, you get the idea. There's a heck of a lot of jobs here even before those peas get sowed, and I'm getting dizzy here.

After the fact of course there's the man who trucks the peas to the market, who sells those peas to the producer, who ultimately puts those peas in a can.

Okay. Wait. And then there's the man who makes the can, and another who makes the paper that makes the label, and yet another who makes the ink that gets printed on the label, and yet another who does his artful mastery to make the label look like a great can of peas on the shelf.

Then there's another trucker who transports the peas to the store, and those cans of peas go into a box, and someone had to make and deliver the box, and then someone has to empty those boxes and put the cans on the shelves, and another has to ring the cans up for sale.

There's the man who built the cash register. Another who printed the money. Who built the conveyor those cans of peas will ride on to get to the bagger? Who made the bags? The shelves? Hell, who built the friggin' store to sell those peas?

Anyone got a bucket? I seriously fear I'm about to toss my lunch.

Oh wait, someone also had to make the truck that transported the peas, and drill for oil that got refined to fill the truck's tank with diesel, and then someone had to make the wheels and the gears and the windows and the machines that made the wheels and gears and the diesel...

In between there's a ton of forklifts as well to move the many cans of peas, and the empty cans before there's peas in them, and the paper rolls before they're labels, and, the metal that made the forklifts had to be mined and someone had to build the warehouse, and...and...

Oh my. This really is the story of the house that Jack built isn't it? It goes round and round and round again. It's a dizzying spinning wheel.

I started by asking the question, "What's in a can of peas?" We're right back where we started just like the story of the house that Jack built. What's in a can of peas are jobs. Many, many jobs. It's something to think about whenever we buy anything. When we think about what we buy, and where we buy it, and when we think it doesn't matter, it does.

The question in the end we have to ask ourselves is, who gets what's in that can of peas? Us? Them? Who?