A Teaching Moment – IOTW Report

A Teaching Moment

Scott Lincicome of The Federalist came across a street philosopher who had stumbled onto a world-beating concept and posted it on a door for all to see.

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If we each grow a large crop of different food, we could all trade with each other and eat for practically free.”

 

 Robert Tracinski picks up the thought experiment and expands it into its real world application. 

Here

Of course hippies are good at coming up with mind blowing ideas and never getting past the “get up in the morning and take a shower” stage in following up.

 

19 Comments on A Teaching Moment

  1. What if we exiled all morons like this to a large island with plentiful natural resources and checked on them in 25 years. I suspect all but a handful would be dead–either by idiocy or at the hands of the strong or cunning–the only ones with a chance to survive.

  2. That’s what we do now.
    It’s (mistakenly) called “Capitalism.”

    I do plumbing. I trade my knowledge and skill for a “medium of exchange” which I then trade to farmers for the produce which they have grown through their knowledge and skills (and land).

    Everything comes out to be “free – i.e. – both sides are satisfied with the trade” until the gov’t inserts its hands into our pockets and relieves us of our “media of exchange” and provide nothing.

    This works quite well until someone “needs” something more complex, like, for instance, a pencil – which requires wood, graphite, copper, rubber, paint, and glue – all from different sources and geographic locations.

    izlamo delenda est …

  3. What if we each grow a large crop of different things, and then Bernie Sanders comes along and takes it all and then gives it to people who won’t grow anything? And then when the people who are growing the food bitch about having their crops taken, the government passes a law making bitching about it illegal and instead of throwing them in jail forces them to grow more food?

    And then George Clooney can make a movie about the brave and wonderful people who won’t grow their own food, and Bruce Springsteen can waller about how life still isn’t fair and both can make scads and scads of money for making movies and writing songs about things that don’t apply to them at all. And then Bernie Sanders will force everyone to only speak Swedish because he really, really likes Sweden and we need to all become viking warriors, only without weapons or killing or hurting or subjugating anyone because only the government can do that – so kind of like warriors without being warlike or even aggressive at all.

    The story does have a happy ending, though – we eventually drop Bernie and Hillary out of solar powered and environmentally friendly blimps at 20,000 feet.

  4. It should probably start with a small group of, say, 100 socially conscious participants. Let’s see, we will need five administrative managers, each with two assistants, six gender equality monitors, five community organizers, six tax compliance officers, eight white privilege instructors, three social media consultants, seven vegan lifestyle advisers, three product evangelists, four marketing strategists, seven entertainment leaders, two project bloggers, four wage equality monitors, two work/life balance advisers, three fair-value purchase agents, four victims assistance unit workers, two ethics leaders, six environmental activists, two species abuse consultants, four human rights advisers, two feng shui consultants, a climate change denier identifier, two triggering language monitors, and a chief visionary officer.

    Perfect. The remaining workers can do, you know, plant stuff.

  5. WTF does he mean by “free?” To farm my crop I would have to buy the land, which I don’t already own. Then I would have to buy things like seeds, fertilizers, and tractors. I would have to water the crop. I think that I’m past the prime age for a physical occupation such as farming, so I would have to hire younger, sturdier people to plant, maintain, and harvest my crop……oh, and am I responsible for delivering my crop to others? Add the cost of a truck and driver……

    Even if this did work out, and I had all the potatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers I could possibly want, what would I do if I needed clothing? A pot? Medicine?

    What this doofus is proposing is to go back to the Stone Age. It’s the same kind of REGRESSIVE thinking that gave us the Occupy Wall Street movement.

  6. Wouldn’t work because some people are lazy, incompetent, or unlucky. They will form coalitions to simply take food from those who were hard working, competent, and not unlucky. Then that system would become entrenched until those who were hardworking and competent stopped bothering because they would just have their shit ripped off anyway.

  7. These comments are awesome.

    How about this? I make leaded glass. I’ll sell it and get a mutually agreeable medium of exchange. I’ll trade it for your plumbing service or bunch of carrots.

    Seems easy enough but I think it’s been done for 1,000s of years. It’s called division of labor-it allows me, a crappy plumber and a worse gardener to get my new laundry room piped and fresh tomatoes.

    Pretty ingenious? Stick in 100 layers of bureaucrats and you’ve got yourself the mess we’re in now. It speaks well just how fucking good it does work that even with the heavy boot of government on it, I still get my tomatoes.

  8. 1607 The Jamestown Colony was founded as a communal society in which all settlers were required to work jointly together to provide for the community in the common store, as a whole, rather than individually. As in most trials of this kind, many shirked their work and the people were not driven to be industrious but rather the few who were hardworking provided for the whole who shared the rewards of their labor.

    “As at this time were most of our chiefest men either sicke or discontented, the rest being in such dispaire as they would rather starve and rot with idleness, then be persuaded to do anything for their owne reliefe without constraint”….Captain John Smith

  9. these morons find some “AWESOME RADICAL COOL” idea at the bottom of a bong and think they’ve achieved enlightenment.

    The fool just invented barter.

    Whoa, dude!

    If they bothered to “turn up” once in a while and listen to the privileged bigoted white teacher droning on and on boringly at the front of the classroom, they might learn a few basics and then, at the bottom of the bong, actually find something new.

    Instead they hear Bernie Sanders recite Marx and think it’s something new and revolutionary.

    Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

    God help us all.

  10. This is what happens when schools (K-College) teach Womyn’s Studies, Environmentalism, and 17th Century Hungarian Polka Dance instead of History, Maths, and Economics. Every graduate has to reinvent the wheel.

    The undoing of Western civilization is nearly complete.

  11. All these chowderheads who seem to think that govt. will provide all they need to live, need to get their heads out of their ass because it ain’t gonna happen ever. And perhaps they should also read the poem If by Rudyard Kipling if they can understand it. How come our generation (the older guys and gals) knows all this stuff and these kids don’t know a damned thing about anything? I know the answer, I’m just pondering the question to myself and maybe a few others who can think and read and do stuff for themselves instead of relying on the govt. or mom or dad or somebody else to do it for them. What a bunch of unmotivated, slacker, unimaginative candy assed pansies they are.

  12. ectually, she replied in her best oxford accent, you should take the shower BEFORE YOU GO TO BED, so as to minimize the damage all those bacteria and fungi will do to you overnight……

    just sayin….now i’m going to go read the post…… 🙂

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