Tao Te Ching — Chapter 75

The people go hungry because those above them devour too much in taxes — that is why they go hungry. The people are hard to govern because those above them are forever interfering — that is why they are hard to govern. The people make light of death because they grasp too hard at the fullness of life — that is why they make light of death. It is only the one who does not make a business of living who is wiser than the one who prizes life too highly.

James Legge (1891)

The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes consumed by their superiors. It is through this that they suffer famine. The people are difficult to govern because of the (excessive) agency of their superiors (in governing them). It is through this that they are difficult to govern. The people make light of dying because of the greatness of their labours in seeking for the means of living. It is this which makes them think light of dying. Thus it is that to leave the subject of living altogether out of view is better than to set a high value on it.

Dwight Goddard (1919)

Starvation of a people comes when an official appropriates to himself too much of the taxes. The reason a people are difficult to govern is because the officials are too meddlesome; the people make light of death because they are so absorbed in life's interests. The one who is not absorbed in life is more moral than he who esteems life.

The chapter is built on three parallel diagnoses, each tracing a social ill back to its cause in the conduct of those at the top. The people are ji, starving — not from scarcity but because qi shang shi shui zhi duo, their superiors consume too much in taxes. The people are hard to govern — not from any innate unruliness but because of shang zhi you wei, the excessive interfering action of those who rule them, the opposite of wu wei. And the people qing si, make light of death, hold their own lives cheap — because life under such conditions, or such grasping after life's surplus, has been made hardly worth keeping. In each case the fault is located upward: the dysfunction of the people is the mirror of the over-taxing, over-managing, over-grasping of those in power.

The final line is condensed and difficult, and translators handle it variously, but its sense rounds off the chapter's logic. Wu yi sheng wei zhe — the one who does not make a fevered business of living, who does not clutch at life's surplus — is wiser, or worthier (xian), than the one who prizes life too highly. The grasping pursuit of more life, more security, more consumption is precisely what hollows life out. This applies both to the rulers (whose over-grasping starves the people) and to everyone: the one who holds life with an open hand lives better than the one who clutches it. The chapter thus links political critique to the book's recurring meditation on how the anxious overvaluation of life defeats itself.

The prophetic indictment of rulers who "devour" the people through excessive taxation stands beside Samuel's warning to Israel about the king who will take their fields and their grain, and the consistent biblical denunciation of those who grow fat at the expense of the poor. The chapter's insistence that social disorder originates at the top, not the bottom, is a recurring note in the moral critique of power across cultures.

The closing paradox — that the one who does not grasp at life lives better than the one who prizes it too highly — echoes the Gospel's "whoever would save his life will lose it," and the Stoic and Buddhist teaching that the frantic clutching at security and pleasure is exactly what poisons the life it means to protect. To hold life loosely is, across these traditions, to hold it well.

The dysfunction of those at the bottom is usually a mirror of the conduct of those at the top: people go hungry when rulers take too much, become ungovernable when rulers interfere too much, and hold their lives cheap when life has been made not worth living. And the deeper truth applies to everyone — grasping too hard at life's fullness hollows it out; the one who holds life with an open hand lives more wisely than the one who clutches it.

The chapter's social analysis remains pointed: when a population is impoverished, unruly, or despairing, the honest place to look first is upward — at extraction, over-management, and the grasping of those with power — rather than blaming those who suffer the conditions. It is a standing argument against the reflex to fault people for problems that originate in how they are governed. The closing line carries the personal dimension into the open: the anxious, acquisitive over-investment in security and the "fullness of life" — more wealth, more protection, more consumption — is precisely what degrades life's quality, both for the grasping rulers and for ordinary people. The one who does not make living a frantic project lives better than the one who prizes life too dearly.