Monday, November 12, 2007

No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class.

One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting Communists in his native country, who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new Communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question: 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn.

When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc.

While we continually lose our freedoms - a little at a time. One should always remember 'There is no such thing as a free lunch!'

20 comments:

  1. Sounds like Libertarian bullshit to me. Libertarians are worse scum than either so called political party.

    There is only a free lunch.

    Money is an abstract concept that is used to control people.

    The premise of this story is also wrong.
    Dead wrong.
    You can not tame a wild pig as described.
    Any farmer who knows a little something will confirm that.
    A wild animal is not a domestic animal.
    The 'young man' that talked to the professor was I assume a stupid young man.
    I should hope that the professor corrected the young man.

    Communism and Capitalism are the same b.t.w.
    Both are Price Systems.
    Rubles or dollars, it makes no difference.
    Both enforce a caste/class system.
    Neither will work in the future.
    Adam Smith or Marx... both equal a theory based on human labor.
    A human can put out 1/20th of a horsepower. A machine any amount.

    The replacement of humans except for made up non essential and pointless jobs such as banking, insurance, the law, etc. effectively destroys purchasing power.
    Technology destroys the Price System.

    To sum it up this is a fable designed as a lesson. The lesson is ideology.
    It has no reality.

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  2. To frame this a little differently...
    in our aberrant society, everything in the intellectual, economic, political and moral realms is made subject to the criterion of success (money).
    As a result, science sees its focus changed from research or explanation to utility and adaptation, and there is no longer room for the integrity of thought; the critical method has now become retrogressive. Adaptation to the demands of a system that evaluates its success in terms of price, of fiscal profit, relegates humanity to the repressive ages preceding the Renaissance.

    Justice no longer has the triumph of right as its exclusive objective, but rather the prompt execution of the commands of the State, whose elitist goals are a public swindle and an assassination of sanity.

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  3. Skip,

    Do you have a standard comment that you cut and paste into every post on every blog? LOL!!

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  4. No I don`t.

    Only to challenged libertarians that are brainwashed with inculcated concepts, like Democracy and money. Ha ha.

    Ayn Rand and Marx are cut from the same Price System cloth.

    Do you know anything about animal behavior ?
    That story was miserable.

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  5. We don't need to debate libertarian philosophy. The story stands on its own.

    If it were impossible to tame a wild animal, there would be no such thing as a domestic animal.

    But that really is beside the point since the analogy is to people. And whether libertarian philosophy is correct or not, the story makes a great point that the beggar/victim philosophy of gov't handouts is destructive.

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  6. My my you are in the 'box'.

    "the story makes a great point that the beggar/victim philosophy of gov't handouts is destructive."

    A good society has no need for charity.

    The story illustrates the backwardness and anti-human nature of Libertarian philosophy.

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  7. Easy to attack the analogy, harder to dismiss the fact that tyranny so often arrives in steps that we hardly hear the cage slam shut behind us.

    This isn't about money, pigs don't know about money; it's about greed. It's not about taming the wild animals either, but about substituting quick gratification for long term self interest. Deer hunters use this method, but of course one usually shoots deer rather than caging them. Either way, it's bacon or venison.

    That governments can take away freedom bit by bit while we think we're getting what we want is hard to deny.

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  8. Its a solid analogy... and appropriate for our times.

    I did skim skip's comments: completely wrong on the "science focus" too. While many "for-profit" labs are interested in scientific development in support of new products, scientists -- in general -- are concerned with the pursuit of truth.

    I know and work with many, and if you can criticize them, it would have to be because many are disconnected from social pressures -- not driven by them.

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  9. Guess I stumbled into a nest of Libertarians.

    Have a nice day in La la land.

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  10. Oh and by the way, did ya all perform the lobotomy on yourselves or did someone else do it ?

    I have not read such anti-intellectual claptrap for a while anywhere.

    Ya`ll prove my points. Lets just see where your bullshit 'ideas' lead.
    HAPPY LANDINGS ~!~

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  11. Great post, too bad Skip doesn't get it.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

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