A parable on power and merit. Thread.
You and I both have farms. We both start with 1 acre, just trying to raise enough crops and animals to survive. Then I realize that if I had more crops and livestock than I needed, I could sell them to make money and live more comfortably.
You and I both have farms. We both start with 1 acre, just trying to raise enough crops and animals to survive. Then I realize that if I had more crops and livestock than I needed, I could sell them to make money and live more comfortably.
So every month I come by your place, beat you up, and take a bunch of your produce and some animals off to market to sell them for 100% profit. You'd fight back, but I'm bigger and have a gun. I stole yours first, see, and you're new in town so you don't have any friends to help.
So you try to stay alive, & I get quite rich. I buy more land, hire some workers (or maybe just some toughs to beat up other farmers too), take *your* land and make you keep working it, and it all compounds to make me quite wealthy. You though are still just trying to stay alive.
I don't have to worry about getting in trouble, because I'm conveniently the mayor and the sheriff. Handy, no? Eventually I've got a few hundred acres and I'm making money hand over fist selling my produce (and still yours!) in the city.
But eventually the other folks in town, who generally get along well with me, force me to accept that I really should sell you your farm back, because this arrangement really isn't fair. Okay, fine, here you go.
I mean you can't afford it but I'll take payments. Or, you know, I can be flexible and help out a neighbor, so a certain monthly amount of produce will suffice.
You have your one acre farm back, the townsfolk are glad to see it and go back to their lives, and I still have hundreds of acres making money for me.
You're free and have your own land, though a bit in debt as, you know, happens to us all in life from time to time.
You're free and have your own land, though a bit in debt as, you know, happens to us all in life from time to time.
I try to be a fair lender, but you know, a man's got to pay his debts, amiright? If you can't in your current state, how is that my fault? So every time you're late with a payment I'll charge an extra 20%, but only in the interest of teaching you to do better of course.
Time passes, and those silly townsfolk come back and want to make me just forgive the whole debt! Can you believe it? But they get pretty worked up, so fine, I just take the loss. Anti-big farmer, if you ask me, but I'll just be the bigger man and let it slide.
So now I have nothing of yours, and I'm taking nothing of yours. You have your freedom, your land, and your produce all to yourself, and I hope you appreciate the freedom we all worked for. We each work our land and benefit from our own work: merit-based income, as it should be.
Granted, I'm farming at a higher level now. I have lots of land so I can rotate crops, give livestock room to roam, and keep diseased plants and animals contained and separated.
And because I'm wealthy I can buy better seed and fertilizer, bring on higher quality equipment I can keep maintained, and hire top notch workers (I don't actually pay them well, mind you, but they really like the free milk and eggs and nobody else is hiring anyway).
I tell you what, being able to grow on that 100% profit early on really just did wonders for my business! #blessed
But you just don't seem able to do nearly as well. Your one acre is confining, the land has been overworked so the soil is poor, and you don't have room to grow healthy herds. Honestly I'm a little disappointed; with all that fuss about making it fair, I expected more from you.
If I'm honest, given what your farm is putting out I wouldn't even hire you now to work on my farm. We have standards, you see.
And with poorer quality produce, your brand just doesn't do as well in the markets. Some folks try to support you, I guess, but you're still barely making pennies to my thousands of dollars of income every month. It can't be helped, really; better produce commands higher prices.
Those are the breaks, though. I was just talking to my farmer friends over lunch (we met at that nice new place in town), and we just don't know why you haven't dealt with these problems in the small farmer community when it's obvious what you need to do.
I mean we're all farming on merit now so it's on you to get this figured out, but all you need to do is grow better produce (I'll still compete, you can bet on that!) so you can make more money to buy more land, see?
And really, that's the only way you'll earn enough to be able to eat with us at the fancy restaurant. That is what you really want, isn't it? Well we're not going to give you a handout or anything, so you'll just have to earn it the hard way, same as the rest of us.
Humble, honest work for honest gain, that's the only way to do it. 👍
