| Quips and Quotes |
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A Modern Day Parable About Living Life More Simply
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| A business man was at the pier of a Mexican coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The business man commented on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied only a little while. The business man then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The business man then asked, "but what do you do with the rest of your time?" The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria. I have a full and busy life, senior."
The business man scoffed. "You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds of the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Soon you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York City where you would run your expanding enterprise."
"But what then, senior?"
The business man laughed and said, "That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company’s stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions."
"Millions’ senior? Then what?"
The business man said, "Then you would retire and move to a small fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids and take a siesta with your wife" |
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Food for Thought
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| Here's an insightful quote from David Lorten from YES! Journal of Positive Futures. Our produce buyer found it in a case of organic basil from T & D Willey Farms.
"Recall that our contemporary global corporations are direct descendents of the British East India Company and the Hudson Bay company. The institutional form of the publicly traded, limited liability corporation was created to make possible the nearly unlimited aggregation of economic power under a centralized command authority for the purpose of colonizing and extracting the wealth of others without regard to human or natural consequences. Today, corporations, which command more economic resources than most states, are using their power to claim ownership rights to yet more of the productive assets of society and planet, including water, soils, air, knowledge, genetic material, and communications." |
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