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An old farmer on his deathbed called for his two sons+. He told them that while his farm did not produce much, there was a valuable treasure buried in it which
by wisty 15y ago
An old farmer on his deathbed called for his two sons+. He told them that while his farm did not produce much, there was a valuable treasure buried in it which they would discover as they plowed the fields. He then left them each half his farm, and his blessing.
When the old man had passed on, the two sons began working in the fields. They worked hard, from morning to night, but never found a brass farthing. Then, when the harvest came, it was bountiful. Their old father had told them the truth - the treasure buried in the land was its fertility, and their hard work had uncovered it!
But everyone wants to believe a get-rich-quick scheme, and the two sons were no exception. They worked twice as hard as before, still hoping to find the treasure. When they found nothing, they began borrowing money to buy the land from each other. They started importing expensive tools to help them dig faster. Eventually, the clamor of creditors made them face the hard truth - they had been wasting their time. And so they fell into a great depression.
+ I'm tempted to say it was three, and give the youngest a cat, a pair of boots, and a sack; but that's really another story.
- Maro 15y agoI think you should've ended it at "...and their hard work had uncovered it!"
- chromic 15y agoHis version is a bit more realistic analogy of what people do.
- iqster 15y agoI thought you were going to end it with something else ... the two sons got massive reverse mortgages on their land. Commodity prices collapsed after the bountiful harvest and the bank ended up foreclosing.
- wisty 15y agoEither way, it works. The point is, real productivity can increase in a bubble. And it slumps when the bubble ends, because this productivity was caused by people working harder for phantom rewards. When those non-existent carrots disappear, people tend to lose motivation.
- hammock 15y agoI'm with you. This article sheds light on a terrible fact of American society today. When "unemployment beats a lousy job" that means that incentives are GROSSLY misaligned. Run that fact through the categorical imperative[1]- you have a country full of people doing nothing, which obviously does not work. I guess this is what happens when you get 99 full weeks of unemployment benefits, when you have a generation of millennials that think they're entitled to everything, and when you have a society that's willing to provide it no matter how much debt it involves. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
- wisty 15y agoAlso, this is my main inspiration for the fable: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/ http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcaval...