An Allegory About a Villiage

There was once a small village. In this village lived an older man. He was in the business of producing a useful product for people in the village. Three of the older boys in the village worked for him, building this useful product. When he began, this product had never been dreamed of before, but now it was integral to life in this village and also in nearby villages, some of whom had similar businesses producing this product.

In the past, the man had not treated the boys fairly. He had required them to work long hours without breaks. He kept most of the profits of the business for himself, paying only enough to keep the boys from quitting.

One day, many years ago, the three boys realized that they were not being treated fairly, and demanded higher wages. The man was forced to comply with their demands, because he could not keep up with demand by himself and he was also getting old and was not able to work as fast, or efficiently as the three boys.

One year, there was a drought. The people in the village started being more careful with their resources. The man discovered that his business was doing poorly. To further complicate matters, some of the nearby villages were offering the product to people in the village. Their product was higher quality, because they were careful to treat their workers well, giving them regular breaks and shorter hours, so that they would not be tired when they worked. Their products cost slightly more, but lasted longer and worked more efficiently. Most of the people in the village decided that they did not want the lower quality product and started buying the higher quality products from other villages.

The old man realized that his business was going to fail if something was not done. He had enough wealth to retire, but he liked being able to buy anything he wanted whenever he wanted. He did not want to have to sell all of the fancy decorations, furniture, and clothing he had accumulated and he especially did not want to have to give up his giant hut. Of course, there were also the three boys he employed. He did not care about them much, but he did realize that they would probably starve if they lost their jobs, or worse, they might try to get the village elders to seize his production facilities and give them to them, when he was unable to pay their wages.

He cooked up a plan. He went to the village elders and plead his case. He told them the sad story of the three boys who relied on him for employment and for their very survival. He explained his current situation and how the drought had caused the people to quit buying his product. He closed by asking the village elders for assistance to help him keep his business operating.

The elders debated. One wanted to just let the man's business die. He explained that the man had done a poor job of running the business and that allowing the business to fail would help improve the economical situation because it would reduce waste and it would encourage others to run their businesses more carefully, if they knew that they were on their own. Another disagreed, pointing out that this man's business was an important source of revenue for the village. A third said he agreed with the first, but that he could not support such a plan because it would harm the three workers employed by the business.

The three each argued their point and then finally it was put to a vote. The final conclusion was that the village elders would provide some resources to help this man's business, not because they cared about the man, but because it was an important source of revenue for the village and because they did not want to see the three workers starve.

The next morning the village elders went to the hut of each villager. From each villager, they selected a few goods which they took. When they had taken some goods from each villager, they brought all of the collected resources to the man and gave them to him, to help prevent his business from failing. The village elders when home, happy that they had been able to help the village and the three boys.

The man brought the goods home. He used some of them to trade for more supplies for producing his goods, he used some to pay the wages he owed the three boys and the rest he kept for himself.


Analysis:

This is a story where the bad guy wins. This man runs his business poorly and treats his employees unfairly. As a result of producing low quality products and the consequences of treating his employees poorly (they unionized), he is put in a position where minor economical problems result in his loosing business and having more expenses than revenue. When the villagers decide that they no longer want to support his business, he goes to the local government for help (in this case, the local government is analogous to the national government, as they are the only governing body over the village). Their solution is to take resources from the people and give them to the man's business. In other words, when the people choose to stop supporting the man's business, the government forced them to support it, by taxing them and giving the man their money anyway. The big difference being that if the villagers had voluntarily supported the man's business, they would have gotten something in return for their money.

If you have not figured it out yet, this allegory parallels our own country's government bailouts. When we chose not to support some businesses in our country, our government stepped in and forced us to support them by taking our tax money and giving it to them. And, worst of all, we did not get anything in return for our money. This is nothing short of legalized theft. When we chose not to spend our money (or invest our money) with specific companies, the government forcibly took our money and gave it to them anyway, with no strings attached.

Right, there were a lot of people who's jobs were at stake. Besides the fact that we obviously did not need the product they produced, which made their jobs pointless (if you read my last allegory, think, digging holes), there were several better solutions to this problem. My personal favorite was that the government should have evenly disbursed the money with tax returns and told the people to stock up on food and other necessities, then just let those companies crash. In the long run, the recovery would have resulted in a much stronger economy that would be more likely to avoid the things that caused the problem in the first place. Another solution would have been for the government to allow the companies to go bankrupt, then appease the unpaid workers by awarding them full ownership and control of the company and all of its facilities.

While the first solution is my favorite, the second solution is probably better. It would leave those who caused the problem out in the cold, where they deserved to be anyway, as a consequence of their greed and incompetence. It would also give the innocent employees a way to continue getting their paychecks and would give them much bigger paychecks since their hard work would no longer have to support the extravagant lifestyles of those freeloading bums that caused the problem in the first place. It would also likely have resulted in higher quality work, and lower prices, which would have allowed US companies to compete with foreign imports.

I don't think it was intentional, but our government's decision to use our hard earned money to support companies that we had already chosen not to support helped the bad guys to win in this particular situation. It is our responsibility to regulate our government through our decisions on who we vote for. Obviously we have failed and have instead elected people who are willing to steal our money to support causes that we have already chosen not to support. Now the question is: Are we going to vote for this same den of incompetent thieves again?

Lord Rybec