Showing posts with label golden egg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label golden egg. Show all posts

6 June 2020

Capitalists are fruit pickers: they only take a cut. Communists and pig farmers take it all

Capitalism resembles picking fruit. Communism resembles slaughtering animals.
CorporateNature Metaphor Series No 124

1. FRUIT TREES & CAPITALISM 
We plant trees and crops in expectation of a return on investment. When we pick the fruit of a tree, we are taxing the tree a percentage of its accumulated carbon and sugar, year after year. Yet, the tree preserves whatever growth does not come in the shape of fruit. This resembles the capitalist system where different people takes a cut at various levels but there is still an incentive for the tree to keep producing.

2. LIVESTOCK & COMMUNISM
When we slaughter farm animals, this is extreme taxation: we impose a 100% tax on the growth of the animal and take everything that the animal has accumulated, including the animal's life. This resembles the communist system where all surplus is expropriated by the state. No wonder that communist regimes collapse as people have no incentive to either produce or not to waste resources.

3. COMPARISON
Ironically, a vegetarian diet of eating fruit is capitalist, while eating meat is communist. Capitalists seem to be good at "milking" the goose that lays the golden eggs, while communists go for the jugular and bring both the goose and the golden eggs to an abrupt end (while promising a bright future).

Livestock
(image source: Wikipedia)