The Ant and The Grasshopper for a New Generation
Grandchildren: Grandpa, will you tell us the story of the ant and the grasshopper?
Grandpa: Sure kids. It goes like this: It was summer and there were two friends, an ant and a grasshopper. The ant worked really hard gathering food while the grasshopper asked, "Come on out and play ant, who needs to be working when it is so beautiful outside?". The ant said, "I need to save now so I have things for the winter." The grasshopper continued his ways and when winter rolled around, the grasshopper found out that food was in short supply and he had none. He pleaded with his friend the ant, "Ant can I please share your food?" and the ant said, "Fuck no, this is 4 years in a row now, I am not working all this time to save up enough food for a good eatin' winter just to have you split it with me where I barely get by."
So the grasshopper got a lot of other grasshoppers to vote for him for president. He then made it the law that all the ants had to share their food with all the grasshoppers. He knew that the ants would always save because they were hard working idiots, and he also knew the grasshoppers had more voters. So what they basically did was vote themselves all of the fruits of the ants' labor.
One day though a brave ant was elected president and wanted to make it so each citizen was required to save in to a personal food storage account. All the grasshoppers accused the ants' of being greedy even though it was the grasshoppers that wanted it to be a law that they deserved someone else's savings. The Association of Lazy Grasshoppers then ran ads throughout the forest that the ants were evil and that the current system was fair. "It is a good sytem because us grasshoppers don't have to save yet we get the same benefits." And then it was so. The grasshoppers continued to vote themselves the ants' life savings and also continued living with the moral superiority that the ants were the selfish ones.
Grandchildren: Why are the grasshoppers so mean Grandpa?
Grandpa: It is the ants who are mean. Don't you see how they want to keep what they earn to themselves?
Grandchildren: But they worked for it didn't they? We think you should keep what you work for.
Grandpa: Then what are lazy or careless people going to do when it comes to retirement? Is it fair to have consequences for our actions? Tell me, is that fair?
Grandchildren: Thanks for burdening us Grandpa. We don't love you anymore.
3 Comments:
Awesome!!
Consequences for actions? And I thought I had profanity blocked!! ;~D
This is a great analogy!! Glad I surfed into your blog!!!
Who blocks profanity? And I wasn't aware that this was an analogy. It is a simple story about insects.
Very good. I don't think, though, many in our society today have even heard the original story. If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, get it take a week off and read it.
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