I'm starting a business. No, it's not a startup. It is just a business to take care of my wife and me. This is why. This story is what I tell people when they say I should make it a startup.
I’m doing similar so I think the tide is changing
The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
81–90 of 131 posts
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#82People love to take this story apart. I always took the message as “stop when you have enough”. It’s a lesson about contentment. I have enough, and I turned my entrepreneurial spirit towards public good instead of revenue. I take days off when it’s sunny, and reintroduced play into my work. I am back to Paul Graham’s “do things that don’t scale”. I am dismayed by the amount of greed among people far wealthier than me…
Maybe it's not money that motivates some people? Money is just a marker of success in this game. The real achievement might be building a business or growing a product or out competing a competitor.
Money is the metric for power
At the highest levels it’s about power and control and shaping the world to what you want it to be
It’s all neurotic anxiety about not having the ability to do whatever you want unimpeded forever and generating “generational wealth” so that literally your kids kids kids will be ensured that they don’t have to go to public school
Go live around billionaires a while and it’s blatantly obvious that everything is just about calming fears and anxieties but with a never ending desire to get more on behalf of whatever in group they relate.
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#83I'd like an extended version of the story where the businessman realizes he's wrong, invites all his friends to give up their lives in the business-world and revert to subsistence living that provides freedom. Then society collapses because if everyone is doing the bare minimum, there isn't anything left over for basic government services.
The moral of story isn't you should be a fisherman or something. It's that you shouldn't change your career (that works for you perfectly) just because someone who looks successful told you so.
Oh I do understand the moral of the story. But to me it's not a very practical lesson. Perhaps the software developers here at HN could realistically coast in life, but to the vast majority of people who want 2 kids (and a good education for them), want to travel, want to own a home, have enough money to hire a good lawyer in case someone screws them over or are falsely accused of a crime, it's not really realistic to work just enough to get by and relax with free time.
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody said that the fisherman is engaged in subsistence living. I'd also like a citation on the claim that "basic government services" require profit-making (and presumably taxation to go with it) that is substantively different than the fisherman's approach to life.
Government services obviously require a resource surplus (and some mechanism to direct that surplus to paying for these services, of which taxation is the most common one). If everybody are chill fishermen, there's no surplus - there's no reason for the fisherman to create one.
The idea that the archetypical businessman in this story is ultimately necessary to provide for government spending is a pretty unique take.
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#85There’s a related story, unfortunately not quite as neatly packaged, and it’s about taxi drivers. A businessman gets into a taxi and starts talking to the taxi driver about (of course) business. The taxi driver is in a great mood and explains that today is a good day, this is his last trip since he has made the $400 he aims to make in just two hours. The businessman asks him what a bad day looks like, and the taxi dr…
Since driving a taxi isn't hard work he should just do 'epic' ten hour shifts every day.
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#86Twist: the fisherman is already rich and has a fleet doing his work.
and is waiting for one of the boat to come back and give him some fish, because he doesn't know how to fish himself and be patient after he spent all those years making business instead
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#87Hyper capitalism is destroying everything. It’s just a question of whether we chose to change course.
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody said that the fisherman is engaged in subsistence living. I'd also like a citation on the claim that "basic government services" require profit-making (and presumably taxation to go with it) that is substantively different than the fisherman's approach to life.
Government services obviously require a resource surplus (and some mechanism to direct that surplus to paying for these services, of which taxation is the most common one). If everybody are chill fishermen, there's no surplus - there's no reason for the fisherman to create one.
The surplus is created by the environment that grows the fish. Sunlight, plankton, little fish, big fish, plate.
Then someone brings in a trawler that scoops up all the fish, and the heretofore independent fishermen now need to do something to convince the seafood company to give them the fish sticks now pooped out by the ship.
So the fishermen become tax accountants and baristas, to provide services for the fish company's clerks.
Net, there is now more economic activity and more GDP. Whereas before, the country only produced as much fish as the fishermen needed to eat (and some surplus to sell at the local market), now it also produces tax services, and espresso services, and fishstick exports.
This lasts for about a decade until the fish stocks are depleted.
The fishermen, who used to live in bamboo huts they'd rebuild themselves every few years, now live in concrete apartment blocks, and they can no longer afford rent.
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Government services obviously require a resource surplus (and some mechanism to direct that surplus to paying for these services, of which taxation is the most common one). If everybody are chill fishermen, there's no surplus - there's no reason for the fisherman to create one.
The idea that the archetypical businessman in this story is ultimately necessary to provide for government spending is a pretty unique take.
There was a statistic saying that top 10% of income earners pay something like 80% of all income taxes (not exact numbers but you get the gist).
Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, apparently the story was conceived by a German, in which case the social system would catch him, provide the health care he needs, and when recovered he'd be back on that beach...
It's also quite improbable when one lives stress free. Also, looking at the water clears your head and makes you more productive in the end. Maybe if one engages in rock fishing or cliff jigging and slips off a wet rock, they could get a debilitating accident. Didn't like for years it but I've finally taken up sport fishing myself last year, after a Greek taught me how they do it and let me try. Shore spinning can be…
My grandfather was a fisherman. Had a massive heart attack that killed him at 60. I barely met him. Years of hard work, exposure to the elements, the ever-present stress of the next catch, family worries and a general life of subsistence were not kind to him.
He was "lucky" he died too, if he survived he would've faced a disabled life in a place with no health care or general services beyond basic. Such was the life on the remote undeveloped seaside.
His wife and kids though surely would have liked to be left with something more than the fishing tools, boat and shack...