Who were Oop and Mork?

Monday, October 20, 2008

I have tried to explain our system of economics with several fables on this Blog. I will make one more try before the elections.

Once upon a time there were two cavemen Oop and Mork. They both had a small garden that fed their families. Now Mork was a much harder worker than Oop and therefore he had more food than his neighbor. But Mork was not satisfied, he wanted even more food that he could store away for hard times so he invented a device that he called a plow.

The plow enabled Mork to till more land and have much larger crops. Oop saw this and asked Mork to make him a plow. Mork said, “Ok, but it will take me away from my own plowing and I will have less food. Then Oop said, “I will give you that same amount of grain from my pile that you would have grown yourself. “Deal”, replied Mork.

There was one problem, Oop did not have that much grain so he said, “You give me the plow today and when I get larger harvests, I will give you the grain that I promised.”

“But suppose you forget to repay me?”, asked Mork. “OK” replied Oop, “I will give you this stone that is green on the back. When I give you the grain, you can return the Greenback stone”. “That sounds fair”, said Mork.

So, Mork stopped working his fields and made a plow for his neighbor Oop. When the plow was finished Mork gave it to Oop and in return Mork got the Greenback stone as an I.O.U.

Several months later, Oop came to Mork and gave him many bushells of grain. Mork returned the Greenback to Oop and that is how capitalization began. When others who saw these two guys with plows they also wanted one so they all struck a deal with Mork to make one for each of them.

Mork stopped plowing altogether and began to spend all of his time making plows and getting grain in return. The other farmers could harvest much more now due to the plow and everyone began using Greenbacks as a medium of exchanged and later changed that to Gold and finally paper money for ease of transactions. Now much commerce is in credits like charge cards. It is still basically an I.O.U. for work done.

Next chapter: A man with an unspeakable middle name is made chief and he proclaims that the cavemen in the next village (the Freeloader tribe) do not have as much food as Oop and Mork. He proclaims that other villagers will now come to this village and take some grain without any labor or Greenbacks in exchanged.

“What will we do?”, asked Oop. “I have toiled all day to produce the crop and the Freeloader tribe gets to eat it. Well the answer is obvious, Oop and Mork began to work less and less and the Freeloaders got less and less until they all starved.

The chief with the unspeakable middle name said, “This is Fair and good, everyone is equal but dead”.

The moral of this fable is that money is only an I.O.U. for work done and it's worthless without someones' labor behind it.

Old sayings: Don't kill the Goose that lays the golden egg.

Don't punish someone who signs your paycheck on the front. If you do, you will never get the opportunity to sign it on the back.

I never got a paycheck from a poor man.

Folks, please think before you vote. Socialism has ruined many countries. Please not ours too.

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