Zhuangzi's tenth chapter, Cutting Open Satchels, argues that safeguards become manuals: invent bushels and scales, and thieves steal using them; invent tallies and seals of trust, and thieves steal those; invent benevolence and righteousness, and the great thieves steal the words. His proof sentence: one who steals a belt hook is put to death; one who steals a state becomes its prince, and benevolence and righteousness are heard most loudly at the princes' gates. His case study: Tian Chengzi murdered the ruler of Qi, took the state, and ruled as stably as the sage-kings. His remedy: abandon sageliness, discard wisdom, and the great robbers will cease.
The chapter's modern afterlife is the observation that power flows to whoever performs righteousness best, not whoever has it: pedestal figures stop being questioned, and the saint brand becomes the thickest cover available. Zhuangzi's logic is structural, not personal: once virtue has a standard, the standard is a tool, and tools are neutral. The louder the moral vocabulary, the better the lockpick it makes.
The claim, in the Daoist commentarial tradition: sages and great robbers are not enemies but co-products, the category saint manufactures the category thief the way exalting the worthy manufactures competition, so the war between them is a single business with two storefronts. Verdict: this is chapter 10's deepest current and the Tao Te Ching's chapter 3 backs it. The counterweight is real too, Zhuangzi's return-to-primitivism has been called a fantasy for two millennia. But as an account of moral vocabulary as contested property, nothing older is sharper.
If morality is a lock, who learned lockpicking first?