Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Parable

Frankly my dear, I wish I did not give a damn.

I am going to reiterate an example of what is going on for those of you...Including my relatives and friends. Who have no idea what's going on.

Imagine an island with 20 islanders. To survive each day they need 20 fish "platters" to feast upon. 5 make and repair nets, 5 make and repair boats, 5 do the fishing, and 5 prepare the meal.
Along comes a shipwrecked Harvard graduate, who feels the benevolent urge to bestow his gift of intelligence upon these wretches.
They listen to him for some God awful reason and thusly, at his behest, they move 3 from repairing/making boats and 3 from repairing/making nets to fishing.
Lo and behold! Much more fish are coming in and now the island is making an incredible 50 fish "platters" per day!
The kind hearted Harvard grad takes his tithe of ten percent and eats 5 of the "platters
leaving the other 20 people still 45! A whole 2.5x their normal "consumption"!
However, over time, the remaining repairers of boats and nets begin to fall behind. This decline in the functionality of equipment has a correlation with a decline in number of fish being caught per day which the Harvard grad routinely denies.
Regardless, the max of 50 becomes 45 then 35 and so forth. The Harvard grad meanwhile takes increasingly larger percentages of the share w/o giving any net benefit as he grows fatter and fatter. So his tithing of 5 becomes a demand for 10 and so on.
This continues until the people realize that they cannot sustain this and hope to survive. For some God Awful reason, perhaps because the Harvard grad spends all his time taking the roll of the island's "media", the islanders beseech the now fairly rotund Harvard grad once more for guidance.
His answer: We need more fish, so more shall go into fishing. Thusly the problem is compounded as more island people are fishing and even less are repairing and preparing.

This is a parable for our current state of affairs. Notice that even a "correction" in which the Harvard grad was ousted (hopefully eaten) and removed from the equation, a return to a balance would require a complete shift in the opposite direction. For now things are in such disrepair that not even the original 5 per occupation would be enough to return the islanders to a state of normality.
Some degree of starvation is inevitable as they fix to repair the damage they had done TO THEMSELVES at the behest of the now consumed Harvard grad (who's public sacrifice will help ease).

This is our fate in lite. Most of your economics professors should be eaten.

Solution! To ease the recovery I say we do like those islanders and dismiss and consume this State.