A masterclass in capitalism taken on a Polish train

Pele, Picasso and Poland inspire a masterclass in capitalism.

Like Pele, star columnists garner a certain amount of resentment from their fellow workers even without much-deserved gold trophies. AFP

Many years ago, more than I care to remember, two friends set up a business. It was in the middle of the 1990s, but it seems so much longer ago because at that time the internet barely existed. Imagine: no Google, no Wikipedia, no Facebook. It's amazing that we were able to communicate at all.

Eduardo was the London correspondent of a Mexican news agency. I was a publisher at Euromoney, the financial publishing arm of the Daily Mail, producing magazines and generating huge profits. I grew bored of making money for my bosses and thought we could do it for ourselves.

So we approached The European,at that time a weekly publication, and sold them the idea that we would produce a supplement that they could print. We would pay them an amount, I can't remember how much but I recall it was paltry, and we would sell advertisements to cover our costs and generate our massive profits. The Porsche 911, the Swan yacht, and the Swiss chalet would soon be ours.

We worked for a while in a large airy office in Farringdon Street, central London, before Eduardo went to Salvador, Brazil, and I set off for Warsaw, Poland. Helping me was a Pole called Lech, who doubled as a translator. We went round to all the bankers, who listened patiently to our pitch, then promised to send us sackloads of money.

Lech and I even took a train to Gdansk in the hope of seeing his famous namesake - the former president Walesa who broke the communist stranglehold. On the long, dreary ride back to the capital our train stopped to pick up some passengers whose slow train had ground to a halt. Suddenly our first-class carriage was flooded with pensioners who had been picking fruit. We shared our food and drinks and I ask Lech to translate.

"You have seen remarkable changes in the past few years," I said. "The fall of the Berlin Wall, independence, democracy, liberalisation and the growth of capitalism. Which has been the most incredible?"

"None," an old crone replied. "All the changes have been for the worst; now we pay more for our electricity, water and housing. They are all crooks."

As a Thatcher's child, weaned on the merits of the free market championed by the former British prime minister, I was shocked. Eduardo and I met up back at our office in London. Faxes went back and forth until it became clear that nobody had any intention of giving us any money. We left our fancy offices, paid the enormous phone bills and looked for other opportunities.

My career has since gone from peak to peak like an Alpine climber. Eduardo appears to have done OK and is now writing for some outfit called The New York Times. I occasionally read his articles - the internet is a wonderful thing - and they are full of wisdom and insight. To cap it all he has just published a book.

The Price of Everything,by Eduardo Porter, is available in a number of languages. I always make a point of buying my friends' books, partly because you never know when you might need them to buy one of yours. I even buy my wife's, although now I tend to wait until they appear in Polish. Her latest, To Hell in High Heels, known in Polish as Do Piekta Na Wysokich Obcasach, is required reading for any Pole who wants to roll back the years. I must send a copy to my friend from the train.

Amazon has yet to deliver Ed's book, but he sent me an extract that appeared in his newspaper, and I was glad to find something in the "Gray Lady" that was a joy to read. I assume that the title of Ed's book comes from the famous quote that a "cynic knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing".

In the piece he discusses the impact that superstar wages have had on the rest of the population.

I understand his concern. Star columnists always generate a certain resentment from their fellow workers, but I fear it's a cross they have to bear. I, for one, have grown used to the raised eyebrows and vacant expressions when I stroll into the newsroom at 11.30 in the morning and produce a piece of polished prose moments later.

Pele, Brazil's most famous footballer, doubtless stirred a similar frisson in his fellow professionals; Picasso doubtless created envy in his pals in Montparnasse when he doodled on a napkin and sold it for more than they made in a year. Little do these artisans appreciate that a moment of genius is worth a lifetime of toil.

Ed's point seems to be that success, while magnificent for those lucky few who achieve it, affects the rest of us adversely. In a way, this makes our failure all those years ago easier to bear.

I hope this book finally makes Ed the money we thought we were in line for all those years ago and that he lends me his Swiss chalet. Like my friend on the train, I have come to regard capitalists as robber barons rather than creators of wealth. I always felt that the value of something had nothing to do with its price, and that it was better to spend money than to earn it. Now if only my bank manager understood that too. I may have to send him a copy of Ed's book.