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And then the fisherman got a horrible toothache and there was nothing he could do about it. A few years later, overfishing led to near-depletion of the local su

by raldi 12y ago

And then the fisherman got a horrible toothache and there was nothing he could do about it. A few years later, overfishing led to near-depletion of the local supply, and new restrictions were implemented on fishing licenses. The fisherman was unable to afford one, and yet he had no other means of supporting his family. By the end of the decade his wife and children were begging on the street. Meanwhile, the businessman was getting a massage at a ski resort in Switzerland.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Until the ski resort closed due to lack of snow from global warming, his business failed as increasing amounts of financial capital were required for ever falling returns on new energy exploration, globalization collapsed due to increased fuel and energy costs making shipping child-labor textiles and fatuous electronics 12,000 miles uneconomic. If your model of the world suggests that fishing isn't a sustainable activity, I suspect you'll find that the rest of the economic system is going to fail not too long after that.
- raldi 12y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=fishing+unsustainable https://www.google.com/search?q=fishing+unsustainable
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Yes, there are a great many present fishing practices which are unsustainable, virtually all of them industrial. It's one of the great ecological tragedies of the 20th century / industrial age. However primitive / simple line-fishing and small-net fishing have been practiced, sustainably, for thousands of years.
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  While the ski resort was closing, the businessman created a simple video game called Minecraft which he later sold for $2.5 billion. Now he has fuck you money and doesn't give a shit what happens to the economy.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Until the economy collapses and he realizes that money is just an abstract concept that works as long as the economy exists. He dies from hunger trying to fertilize his field with banknotes and get bees to offer him honey in exchange for an electronic cash transfer.
    - sixQuarks 12y ago
      1,000 years in the future, an advanced alien civilization digs up the remains of humanity, decodes all of our DNA, figures out all of our interactions, and decides to recompose the businessman and bring him back to life after discovering he was the creator of Minecraft.
technofiend 12y ago
Hah. Funny, but Brazil has socialized medicine.
- moggflunkies 12y ago
  lol! So in the end the fisherman got a horrible toothache and there was nothing he could do about it.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
The point being, we who are like the businessman are the slaves of our economy. We get great perks from that Moloch, like healthcare, million types of foods, computers, cinemas, all the awesome technology - but in exchange, we need to slave away our lives. It's a trade-off. We're entering the times when we can build machines to relieve us from our chains, but (apart from needing to restructure the capitalist economy) the transition is being slowed down by the deeply ingrained meme that Everyone Has To Work, Or Else Is A Lazy And Bad Person. It was a reasonable assumption in the times of high scarcity, but nowdays it's becoming hurtful. What is striving to earn "FU money" if not trying to free oneself from the slavery?
- jedmeyers 12y ago
  Since the beginning of humanity people have been slaves to the necessity of survival.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.
    - aidenn0 12y ago
      > Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. This has been predicted for at least the past 100 years it seems; I'm not holding my breath on it panning out in my lifetime, so I don't see how it should affect my short-term behavior.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty. Most likely, such a realization will occur, if at all, only after (1) we do see massive increase in poverty, and (2) the people subject to that massive increase in poverty violently demonstrate their displeasure with it, and even then the realization will be far from universal and a matter of lasting controversy. See, for a historical parallel, how we got from the industrial revolution and how long it took before there was significant effort to provide even basic protection for workers from exploitation. (And how frequently people still argue that some of the basic protections adopted are unnecessary and counterproductive imposition by government on the rights of corporations.)
zeidrich 12y ago
This is a fearful way to look at things, especially given the context. Mojang is being sold for 2.5 billion dollars. In reality, Minecraft is being sold for 2.5 billion dollars, because I'm sure Microsoft doesn't give a rat's ass about Scrolls or Cobalt. Notch founded Mojang, and wrote Minecraft. Notch wants to do the things he wants to do. Of that 2.5 billion dollars, I'm sure he's going to be getting a reasonable portion. A person who goes to school, works hard, and finds a good job making $100,000/year for 40 years, might make 4 million dollars over the course of their life. A Persson who writes minecraft, and then sells his company for 2.5 billion dollars, only needs to to get 0.16% of the sale to be in the same situation as the person who worked for a six-figure salary for his entire life. Given that he was the entire power behind Minecraft, I'm sure he'll get more than a few million dollars out of the deal. The parable is about striving for excess without considering your needs. Certainly there's an amount of saving for a rainy day that's prudent. But you need to know when to slow down. Sure, if you have a billion dollars you can go and get 2 billion. You can work your hands to the bone and make 4 billion. You can exploit people and make 6 billion. But if you can live a happy and carefree life off a few million dollars, or have a terrible exhausting hurtful life with a few billion, when do you stop? If you write a game and someone wants to buy it from your 22 person company for 600 times as much money as a pretty-well-off person makes in an entire lifetime, you can pretty much afford to say yes and do whatever the hell you like. It just happens to be the case that Notch prefers to write games that might never be popular more than spend it talking about getting a massage at a ski resort in Switzerland.
- libria 12y ago
  I thought the story was directed to the general readership, in which case I find it a naive oversimplification of wealth/labor and raldi's addendum to it realistic. If it applied specifically to notch, his financial freedom would be very obvious to a passing businessmen; ie, he'd be ordering burgers from the local joint to feed himself, not slaughtering cattle for meat (unless he enjoys that part). Only Hollywood seems to think we all work like rats without considering why. If I had all my student loans, car, house, retirement, recreational allowance provided for, I might never touch a keyboard again. Point being "striving for excess without considering your needs" is more concise and accurate than any interpretation of this "parable".

by raldi 12y ago

dredmorbius 12y ago

Until the ski resort closed due to lack of snow from global warming, his business failed as increasing amounts of financial capital were required for ever falling returns on new energy exploration, globalization collapsed due to increased fuel and energy costs making shipping child-labor textiles and fatuous electronics 12,000 miles uneconomic. If your model of the world suggests that fishing isn't a sustainable activity, I suspect you'll find that the rest of the economic system is going to fail not too long after that.

raldi 12y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=fishing+unsustainable https://www.google.com/search?q=fishing+unsustainable
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Yes, there are a great many present fishing practices which are unsustainable, virtually all of them industrial. It's one of the great ecological tragedies of the 20th century / industrial age. However primitive / simple line-fishing and small-net fishing have been practiced, sustainably, for thousands of years.
sixQuarks 12y ago
While the ski resort was closing, the businessman created a simple video game called Minecraft which he later sold for $2.5 billion. Now he has fuck you money and doesn't give a shit what happens to the economy.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Until the economy collapses and he realizes that money is just an abstract concept that works as long as the economy exists. He dies from hunger trying to fertilize his field with banknotes and get bees to offer him honey in exchange for an electronic cash transfer.
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    1,000 years in the future, an advanced alien civilization digs up the remains of humanity, decodes all of our DNA, figures out all of our interactions, and decides to recompose the businessman and bring him back to life after discovering he was the creator of Minecraft.

technofiend 12y ago

Hah. Funny, but Brazil has socialized medicine.

moggflunkies 12y ago
lol! So in the end the fisherman got a horrible toothache and there was nothing he could do about it.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

The point being, we who are like the businessman are the slaves of our economy. We get great perks from that Moloch, like healthcare, million types of foods, computers, cinemas, all the awesome technology - but in exchange, we need to slave away our lives. It's a trade-off. We're entering the times when we can build machines to relieve us from our chains, but (apart from needing to restructure the capitalist economy) the transition is being slowed down by the deeply ingrained meme that Everyone Has To Work, Or Else Is A Lazy And Bad Person. It was a reasonable assumption in the times of high scarcity, but nowdays it's becoming hurtful. What is striving to earn "FU money" if not trying to free oneself from the slavery?

jedmeyers 12y ago
Since the beginning of humanity people have been slaves to the necessity of survival.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.
  - aidenn0 12y ago
    > Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. This has been predicted for at least the past 100 years it seems; I'm not holding my breath on it panning out in my lifetime, so I don't see how it should affect my short-term behavior.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty. Most likely, such a realization will occur, if at all, only after (1) we do see massive increase in poverty, and (2) the people subject to that massive increase in poverty violently demonstrate their displeasure with it, and even then the realization will be far from universal and a matter of lasting controversy. See, for a historical parallel, how we got from the industrial revolution and how long it took before there was significant effort to provide even basic protection for workers from exploitation. (And how frequently people still argue that some of the basic protections adopted are unnecessary and counterproductive imposition by government on the rights of corporations.)

zeidrich 12y ago

This is a fearful way to look at things, especially given the context. Mojang is being sold for 2.5 billion dollars. In reality, Minecraft is being sold for 2.5 billion dollars, because I'm sure Microsoft doesn't give a rat's ass about Scrolls or Cobalt. Notch founded Mojang, and wrote Minecraft. Notch wants to do the things he wants to do. Of that 2.5 billion dollars, I'm sure he's going to be getting a reasonable portion. A person who goes to school, works hard, and finds a good job making $100,000/year for 40 years, might make 4 million dollars over the course of their life. A Persson who writes minecraft, and then sells his company for 2.5 billion dollars, only needs to to get 0.16% of the sale to be in the same situation as the person who worked for a six-figure salary for his entire life. Given that he was the entire power behind Minecraft, I'm sure he'll get more than a few million dollars out of the deal. The parable is about striving for excess without considering your needs. Certainly there's an amount of saving for a rainy day that's prudent. But you need to know when to slow down. Sure, if you have a billion dollars you can go and get 2 billion. You can work your hands to the bone and make 4 billion. You can exploit people and make 6 billion. But if you can live a happy and carefree life off a few million dollars, or have a terrible exhausting hurtful life with a few billion, when do you stop? If you write a game and someone wants to buy it from your 22 person company for 600 times as much money as a pretty-well-off person makes in an entire lifetime, you can pretty much afford to say yes and do whatever the hell you like. It just happens to be the case that Notch prefers to write games that might never be popular more than spend it talking about getting a massage at a ski resort in Switzerland.

libria 12y ago
I thought the story was directed to the general readership, in which case I find it a naive oversimplification of wealth/labor and raldi's addendum to it realistic. If it applied specifically to notch, his financial freedom would be very obvious to a passing businessmen; ie, he'd be ordering burgers from the local joint to feed himself, not slaughtering cattle for meat (unless he enjoys that part). Only Hollywood seems to think we all work like rats without considering why. If I had all my student loans, car, house, retirement, recreational allowance provided for, I might never touch a keyboard again. Point being "striving for excess without considering your needs" is more concise and accurate than any interpretation of this "parable".