A thought experiment prompted by recent threads on education and health care.

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
Say you have a culture where you eat communally around a big table with nice slow food and good conversation. The table and dining manners become the foundation for your culture, the place where stories are told and traditions passed down, where the youth are instructed by their elders and taught community respect.

Not say for some reason, maybe a shortage of potatoes, one of the tribe decides he's going to gorge on the potatoes before anybody else gets a helping.

And let's say that he encourages a few others to do the same, not wanting to be the only one getting the cold stares.

And so, in a short time, in order to get enough calories to stay alive, dinner becomes a massive food fight with everybody stuffing themselves as fast as they can.

This is what I referred to in another thread as a race to the bottom.

It's a free country they have and there is no law against eating as much as you can as fast as you can. It's called there free table competition with the best being the fattest and the less successful dying of starvation.

Some wanted to make laws to keep people from eating fast, but they were called nanny state do goodies and folk of great arrogance, pretending to know what was best for others.

This very sort of thing happened when you let white people loose on Indian land. They, the Indians, forgot to hold title to it in a court house in the capital. They thought of it as their table and they ate slow and easy like.

Some want to make a table for health care and some what to take the science classroom off the table so there's more grits.
------------

Pigs are very successful animals because they are pigs. They will eat huge amounts of almost anything. Runt pigs, however, usually die.

Dinners are successful animals so long as they aren't infected by pigs and they see that all have enough to eat.

What culture do you naturally fit into?

How do pigs protect their rights as pigs.

How do diners save their culture from pigs?
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
Are all the pigs equal or are some more equal than others?

An 11-year-old boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog that weighed 1,051 lbs. and measured 9'4" from its snout to its tail.

Among themselves the degree of piggishness is a matter of great pride but when dealing with dinners they pretend great equality, a subject they frequently fall back on to remind dinners they should be better at being pigs too.
 
Last edited:

rudder

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
19,441
86
91
It's a free country they have and there is no law against eating as much as you can as fast as you can. It's called there free table competition with the best being the fattest and the less successful dying of starvation.

What is to stop the slower people from going out and growing/getting their own food? Then they can sell it to the fat people who have become so obese from gorging themselves on potatoes that they cannot get out of their chairs.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
What is to stop the slower people from going out and growing/getting their own food? Then they can sell it to the fat people who have become so obese from gorging themselves on potatoes that they cannot get out of their chairs.

The pigs would just take over with corporate farms and there would be a few pigs that sold most of the food with a few slow farmers trying to hang on. Swine flu is infectious.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
racist thread is racist.

Pigs are very proud of their piggishness and become offended when there is mention of pig inequality. They aren't too good at thought experiments either and bring up irrelevancies.
 

Mursilis

Diamond Member
Mar 11, 2001
7,756
11
81
A "thought experiment"? More like an obvious trap. So simplistic, and so many questions left unanswered; for example, how does the food get to the table? Does everyone pitch in, or do some toil in the fields while some strum guitars and ponder the sun?
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
some pigs have more worth to the nation than others.

Pig minds enjoy platitudes in which the terms they use are never defined. In this way the fiction that personal worth is a matter of pounds can easily be maintained.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
A "thought experiment"? More like an obvious trap. So simplistic, and so many questions left unanswered; for example, how does the food get to the table? Does everyone pitch in, or do some toil in the fields while some strum guitars and ponder the sun?

Of great concern to pigs is who has to work. There are several reasons for this. Pigs turn everything that is natural for dinners into competition and that requires exhaustive focus and effort, spoiling what comes unforced and natural into work.

Secondly, this exchange for slavery to piggishness becomes a source of pride in which the slavery of work is exhausted as a matter of pride. The pig who can best waste his life in eating and eating and eating becomes the greatest pig. Such pigs are very keen that it is never they that produce the food. They live in constant terror that some pig somewhere is getting more food with less dedication to pigdumb.
 

Mursilis

Diamond Member
Mar 11, 2001
7,756
11
81
Of great concern to pigs is who has to work. There are several reasons for this. Pigs turn everything that is natural for dinners into competition and that requires exhaustive focus and effort, spoiling what comes unforced and natural into work.

Secondly, this exchange for slavery to piggishness becomes a source of pride in which the slavery of work is exhausted as a matter of pride. The pig who can best waste his life in eating and eating and eating becomes the greatest pig. Such pigs are very keen that it is never they that produce the food. They live in constant terror that some pig somewhere is getting more food with less dedication to pigdumb.

So I'm guessing you're one of those who expect others to bring you your meals while you ponder the sun and call others pigs?

All creatures, including man, are born weak and dependent, but even Mother Bird knows Baby Bird has to leave the nest eventually, whether he wishes to or not.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
74,592
6,715
126
So I'm guessing you're one of those who expect others to bring you your meals while you ponder the sun and call others pigs?

All creatures, including man, are born weak and dependent, but even Mother Bird knows Baby Bird has to leave the nest eventually, whether he wishes to or not.

Yes, and in this case you are weak and dependent in wanting me to do your thinking. You asked questions for which there was evidence of answers were you willing to think about it. Who put food of the Indians tables before the White man came? Did some hunt, some dance and sing, some gather herbs or grind maze.

You were trained to think inside a pig box and you are infected with pig thought as I said. Your pig training gets in the way of you even considering the problem I suggested, because of course, your world can't coexist with those questions.
 

StageLeft

No Lifer
Sep 29, 2000
70,150
5
0
You have simply described the tragedy of the commons. It is a strong effect and is why allowing individuals to always make decisions that affect more than just them is frequently not realistic. You will always have people gaming the system unless you make it prohibitive for them to do so.
 

rudder

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
19,441
86
91
The pigs would just take over with corporate farms and there would be a few pigs that sold most of the food with a few slow farmers trying to hang on. Swine flu is infectious.

But the corporate farms would use too many chemicals or genetically modified crops for the fat pigs likings who will purchase the food nonetheless. The slow farmers seeing that their farming industry is changing... decide to market organically grown local produce. The slow farmers start to do quite well as more of the health conscious pigs buy the locally grown organic produce.
 

Specop 007

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2005
9,454
0
0
Pigs are very proud of their piggishness and become offended when there is mention of pig inequality. They aren't too good at thought experiments either and bring up irrelevancies.

Irrelevancies like comparing free market principles with potatoes?

Stick with your incense and water bong man.

That said, I like potatoes. Especially if they are mashed with some milk and butter added. But I like bacon more. Mmmmm bacon.
 

drebo

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2006
7,034
1
81
Conservatism is organic.
Liberalism is learned.


/thread

Better quote:

If you're not a liberal by 20, you have no heart.
If you're not a conservative by 30, you have no brain.

To the OP:

This works about as well as "barstool economics," in that it doesn't work. I'm a staunch conservative (not a neocon, but a true conservative), and I don't buy what you're spewing.

Regulating how much each diner can eat will only make everyone hungry. Redistribution of wealth has not worked once in recorded history. Why do we assume it will work now?
 

nobodyknows

Diamond Member
Sep 28, 2008
5,474
0
0
But the corporate farms would use too many chemicals or genetically modified crops for the fat pigs likings who will purchase the food nonetheless. The slow farmers seeing that their farming industry is changing... decide to market organically grown local produce. The slow farmers start to do quite well as more of the health conscious pigs buy the locally grown organic produce.

Did you really just say "health consious pigs"??? ROFLMAO!! :D