Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Why Socialism fails

Came across this interesting and instructive story recently:

An Economics Professor at a local University made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and with socialism, no one would be poor, and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “Ok, we will have an experiment in this class on the socialism principles. All grades will be averaged, and everyone will receive the same grade, no matter how one actually performs in the exam"

After the first test, the grades were averaged, and everyone got a “B”. The students who studied hard were a upset, and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little studied even less, and the ones who had studied hard earlier took it easy too. The second test average was a “D”! No one was happy. When the third test rolled around, the average was an “F”.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of others. By the end of the year, all failed.

The professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when the reward is not yours, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The Villagers and the Monkeys


Once upon a time, a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for Rs.10/-. Since there were so many monkeys around, the villagers started catching them. The man bought hundreds of monkeys at Rs.10/- each, and kept them in a huge cage for all to see. As supply started to diminish, it became a bit difficult to get new monkeys and the villagers stopped their efforts.  The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at Rs.20/- per monkey. The villagers now renewed their efforts and started catching monkeys again. Soon, the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate now increased to Rs.25/- and the supply of monkeys reduced even further. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at Rs.50/- ! However, he had to go to the city on some business, and would return after a couple of days. Till then, his assistant would look after the monkeys kept in that cage. When the man was gone, the assistant told the villagers – “Look at all these monkeys in the cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at Rs.35/- each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell it to him for Rs.50/-.” The villagers liked the idea, and squeezed up all their savings and bought the monkeys back. Then, then the assistant too left with all the money and never returned.  

Welcome to the Stock Market.

Monday, January 9, 2012

The King and the Falcon

Once upon a time, there was a King who received two Falcons as gift from a visiting sage. The King kept the falcons in his garden and took good care of them. Every day, one of the Falcons would fly high up in the air, go to far off places and return to the garden in the evening. The other falcon however, stayed put in one place and rarely moved out of the branch of the tree where it lived. The King wondered what the reason for this was, the sage had told him both the falcons fly high and far. The King asked his courtiers and ministers, enquired with all the wise men from his kingdom why the other falcon did not fly, but no one would give him a convincing reply, or make the falcon fly. The King announced a reward for anyone who could make the falcon fly. Several people tried, but all of them failed. The King gave up hope.
Then one day, the King heard that the falcon had started flying. It now went as high as the other falcon, as far as the other and came back in the evening. Surprised, the King asked who had made the falcon fly, and was told an old wise farmer had done it. The King called him to his court and asked, “What did you do to make the falcon fly?” “Oh, It was simple”, said the farmer, “I just cut the branch of the tree where the falcon lived”.
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Reminded me of a quote my friend Prabodh had told me – Everything you want in life is lying there, waiting to be picked, outside your comfort zone.