Thoughts on submitting year-end business returns.

[davywavy]

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.

If you wait for David to come along and dig a pond, use his own money to stock it with fish, make himself a fishing rod and teach himself to use it, and then take any fish he catches off him and hand them out then the Trisha-watching population will never have to learn to do anything at all.


Whilst you're at it, why not punitively tax shovels, pond-digging and fish food? There's no sense in actually encouraging people to act entrepreneurially, is there?

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Frankly, no, I don't. I'd rather do nothing.

Unfortunately, I'm too honest to do nothing and just take from other people.

[chess]

In what way is it 'honest' to do something you don't want to do instead of subsisting from the efforts of others (which, tbh, everyone in the modern developed world already does to a great extent anyway)?

It would only be dishonest to take from other people if they didn't know you were doing it, surely?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Taking from others and giving nothing in return isn't honest, however you dress it up.

Back when I was long-term unemployed I worked as a volunteer in my local hospital, as I was being given something and had a moral duty to give something in return. I ask no more from others.

And no less, either.

[chess]

Why is it not honest?

It might not be _virtuous_, but honesty is a matter of whether you're deceiving someone or not. Even theft is only dishonest if you bother covering it up.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

If you want to call the distinction virtuous and selfish, I'm totally fine with that. I rather like the idea of being a paragon of virtue.

"theft is only dishonest if you bother covering it up."

Try that one in court, see how far you get.

[chess]

Theft is against the law; that doesn't make a thief dishonest (although it's quite likely they are because theft by deception is easier than theft without deception).

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your point, but I'd not care to try to defend someone on that basis; jury of one's peers is the arbiter we use and saying "he may be a thief but he isn't dishonest" is unlikely to get much traction, either there or in society generally

To confirm: Are we agreed that honestly working for one's living is virtuous, and taking from others and giving nothing "because they don't want to" in return is indeed selfish?

[chess]

Doing useful stuff is virtuous. Taking from others and giving nothing in return is selfish.

I think that quite a lot of people who currently take from others and give nothing in return would love to give something in return if they had anything, and also that 'the satisfaction that other people's lives can go on to a decent standard' and 'not trying to set up tents on my lawn because they have nowhere else to go' are Something rather than Nothing.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

As I say; when i was long term unemployed I worked as a volunteer in my local hospital.

I see a lot of people saying they'd love to give something back, and a lot of hospitals who are short of cash. You'll forgive me, I'd hope, if I don't believe anyone who says they want to give something in return and doesn't do so. There's no more stopping them than did me.