If there’s anything more irritating than reading another person’s mail, it would have to be sharing another person’s mail with a few million other snoops. Especially when the culprit writes the letter in question and fills it with truly bad ideas.

So Ralph Nader, consumer advocate/professional worrywart, scribbles a little note to Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO/force of darkness, chides him for being so filthy rich and urges him to gather all of his filthy rich pals together for a conference on how to put a stop to all this unacceptable money-making. Somewhere between his study and the post office, Nader decides to save the stamp and calls a press conference instead.

The gist is this: There is but a finite amount of wealth in the world; it is accumulating in the hands of a few; it must be divvied up. Thus, in one letter running just over a single page, Nader sums up the theories of two of the worst economists ever to come down the pike — Malthus and Marx — and presents them as the road map to a brave new world.

Gates has yet to reply. It’s doubtful he will, given his past experience with the national nanny. Remember, it was just a year ago that Nader staged a much-hyped conference on technology that lost all credibility when it was exposed as a two-day global whine about Microsoft. One bashing by Saint Ralph is enough for anybody.

But if he does, Gates’s reply might go something like this: Dear Ralph — Companies such as mine, while not especially cute and cuddly, do not hog the economic pie, we bake fresh daily. Just ask the thousands, nay, millions who are enjoying unparalleled opportunity in a world where intellect and diligence at last are more important than birthright. There’s enough for everybody. Yours, Bill.

P.S. Something doesn’t add up in your assertion that my personal wealth ($50 billion, give or take) is more than the total assets — savings, home equity, pensions and so on — of the bottom 40 percent of Americans. Heck, most of those 106 million have $500 worth of assets just in never-used Stairmasters. Check the batteries in your calculator.

P.P.S. Next time you write, use an envelope, not a soapbox.

Poverty, war and disease are problems the world has long wrestled with. If Ralph Nader sincerely wants to help, he could write to the 535 members of Congress and ask them create a tax system that is fair to the working class and a health care system that ensures affordable access.

He could write to the thugs in Rwanda, Kosovo, Kashmir and other blighted lands and ask them stop the killing. He could write to the boards of corporations that ship the best manufacturing jobs overseas for substandard wages. Or to parents who shirk their parental responsibilities. Or to the drug lords who prey upon the poor. But then, the man who sent the Corvair to the junkyard and who frets about the dangers of colored toilet paper no doubt has very strong views concerning the hazards of writer’s cramp.