| Magnetonium |
A friend of mine sent me this fairy tale, so I felt like sharing. Representation of our world, I suppose.
The Parable of the Fishing Net
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Let's suppose, that a clever proletarian, Jane Bourgeois, weaves a new invention: a fishing net, out of her own hair in her spare time. It's not difficult to do, and only takes her a half-hour. It just so happens, due to a genetic mutation, that she was lucky enough to be born with hair that is uniquely strong and amazingly durable. Nobody else is lucky enough to have hair like hers. This is just an undeserved advantage she was born with.
And yet, I think even a socialist will, so far, agree that, if anything can ever be someone’s rightful property, this capital, her new fishing net, is properly Jane’s. (If not, I wonder what could ever belong properly to anyone, or how anyone could be entitled to anything.)
Now, suppose Jane, who lives on a liberal, laissez-faire capitalist sort of island, offers to rent her wonderful new invention to a fisherman named Frank. That is, she gives permission to Frank to use the net to catch fish, in exchange for a share of the catch. She pays him a fixed wage in fish that's equivalent to about half the average catch.
Suppose Frank can catch four times as much with the net as without it, and so he is willing to enter into this arrangement in which he effectively gives Jane half his catch in exchange for the use of her net.
Now Jane can eat for the rest of her life without working, if her hair is durable enough, or maybe she has to make a new net for Frank once every few years, no big deal. Frank, for his part, can effectively double his take-home. They are both better off. So Jane becomes a capitalist; and Frank becomes a laborer.
Now, a month later, along comes the social-democrat. This young egalitarian sees that all the old lady does for her living is simply to give permission for her property to be used in production, while Frank gets up before the sun and does all the hard work. Quite true.
But the socialist then concludes from this fact that Jane has not personally contributed to production, and that her share of the catch is something of which she is unjustly depriving Frank. The socialist says that Jane is just a parasite, a “bloodsucker,” and ought to be liquidated.
But that is false, and does not follow.
Now, it must be admitted that it is true that Frank might be better off, at least in the short run, if he liquidated the old lady and kept the net, and all the fish, for himself.
But that would hardly be right or just, would it?
Nor would it show that he would be better off if she'd never been born. He'd be worse off if she'd never been born. If it wasn’t for her and her original investment in the net, Frank would not have had all that extra fish all these years.
Now, Jane, the lucky capitalist, got rich from the arrangement. But she did not get rich at the expense of Frank, nor does she deprive him of anything. Jane was lucky to be born so clever, and with such great hair. But Frank was lucky too. Lucky to meet Jane."
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