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The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

thestorytellers.com

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Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#121

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

smsm42 wrote: post #120
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't wish to organize his life around maximizing his output. The entire point of the story is to get people to consider to what extent that makes sense, and under what circumstances. If you consider a good life to be precisely how the fisherman already lives, it takes a rather compelling argument (and it make even require compelling force) that he should behave otherwise.

> If you consider a good life to be precisely how the fisherman already lives That's a pretty big if. I'd start with asking how is dental care in his village. Does the village doctor use anesthesia? Would the anesthesiologist accept fish as a payment, and how many fishes a pain-less root canal treatment costs? Maybe after learning the answers to these questions I'd consider some other definition of a good life.

I strongly encourage you to take a vacation in the Greek Islands, preferably with some incipient emergency dental issue just starting to flare up.

I think you'll find the dentist to be just fine.

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#122

Post by BeFlatXIII »

its_bbq wrote: post #68
dbgev wrote: post #2

A few years later, the fisherman gets an expensive, debilitating disease and dies penniless and destitute and alone. But at least he had fun before that.

Better to enjoy your life before your debilitating disease than to be miserable up until your debilitating disease. The fisherman was going to die anyways.

We are all racing to the same destination.

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#123

Post by stcroixx »

anonu wrote: post #63
nicbou wrote: post #54

People 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.

Or causing a lot of people immense grief.

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#124

Post by andrei_says_ »

nicbou wrote: post #54

People 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…

Looking at greed as a disease / mental health issue changed my outlook.

Absence of content is exhausting.

It is happening to them.

The problem is that our culture also suffers from this disorder and glorifies the disease.

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#125

Post by petre »

nickpp wrote: post #90
petre wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You realise I wasn't talking about commercial or subsistence fishing.

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#126

Post by cyclotron3k »

throwuwu wrote: post #96
oatmeal1 wrote: post #24

I'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.

God forbid they’d have to cut the military budget and fire some bureaucrats.

They cut things like schools, health care and welfare long before the military budget saw any cuts

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#127

Post by nickpp »

gremlinunderway wrote: post #116
nickpp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one who can answer that question is the free market. And while not satisfying for everybody, it certainly is the best answer we found so far while trying various forms of organisations with this humankind of ours. The best answer in that not only was the only one that got us fed unlike the alternatives that only brought suffering, death and starvation but also got us such an amazing wealth that we have the l…

Who's "we" in the "best answer we found so far" statement? Ignoring for a fact that having magic devices that do some esoteric operation isn't a useful measurement of any kind of 'wealth' (as if having the privilege to own an iPhone while working 10 hour mind-numbing days at an amazon warehouse is 'luxury'), you do realize that the fact you're posting here when most of the world under the free market lives in abject…

"those pensioners and others in the 1990" were enjoying the fact that they could finally buy bread and other foodstuff in the store. And have medicine in hospitals. And the fact that they could talk to one another without wondering who is a secret service collaborator.

I mean those who stayed in the country, because an amazing number were enjoying their new found freedom of simply going to a capitalist country to try and improve their lot in life. Funny how none of them western exploited were in any hurry to go and enjoy the communism wonders. The walls and bullets at the border were all to keep us "lucky" communists in!

And you haven't seen abject poverty and dehumanization until you've visited a communist orphanage...

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#128

Post by nickpp »

gremlinunderway wrote: post #117
nickpp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one who can answer that question is the free market. And while not satisfying for everybody, it certainly is the best answer we found so far while trying various forms of organisations with this humankind of ours. The best answer in that not only was the only one that got us fed unlike the alternatives that only brought suffering, death and starvation but also got us such an amazing wealth that we have the l…

Also, setting up the only other alternative to an uncontrolled free market as being Soviet communism to begin with is incredibly ignorant and naive. I'm sure this same scenario played out during aztec human sacrifices. Someone asks "do we really need to do all these human sacrifices to ensure a good harvest?" and the other responds "well, maybe not, and its not satisfying for everybody, but its probably the best answ…

If you found a better system, by all means - propose it here. But usually when leftists say that they just mean some form of watered down communism and completely skip over stuff like Stalin's, Mao's or Pol Pot's blood baths bringing up Aztecs instead...

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#129

Post by dazc »

gremlinunderway wrote: post #113
dazc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since driving a taxi isn't hard work he should just do 'epic' ten hour shifts every day.

I hope I'm missing the sarcasm or irony but saying driving a taxi isn't hard work is a really ignorant comment. It's the kind of privileged statement coming from naive knowledge workers who believe that intellectual challenges are the ultimate measurement of difficulty. Personally, I think having a job where your only challenge is solving puzzles is one of the most privileged and lucky one could have, especially if i…

I used to work in construction and was lucky enough to find an escape route before my body eventually gave in to the daily punishment. The toll wasn't just physical either, after working hectic long hours, day in day out, constant travelling, working away from home for weeks at time and far too many night-shifts, there was an inevitable mental breakdown. I found my feet again eventually but it wasn't easy.

Driving a taxi isn't hard work and if you think it is then I congratulate you for having such a blessed and entitled life that you are able sit in judgement and call me ignorant.

Re: The businessman and the fisherman (1963)

#130

Post by kortilla »

namaria wrote: post #59
kortilla wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they aren’t. They are pointing out that it’s a childlike fantasy that ends in pain and agony because a society based on subsistence is missing basic things like anti-bacterials, insulin, anesthesia for surgery, etc.

The remedy to pain and agony is opium not modern medicine. Stretching out the lives of workers is an economic imperative not a humanistic one. Our fear of suffering and death makes us easy to manipulate.

My grandfather got a heart surgery and a pace maker and lived 20 more years gardening, going to the cabin, helping raise his grandkids, and playing cards daily with his wife. Those 20 years were arguably many of the best of his life considering he grew up in the Great Depression and then went to world war 2.

Getting ripped on opium is no different than getting ripped on morphine. Modern medice has that too. The difference is that modern medicine has far more tools in the bag before something becomes a terminal illness.

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