Marco
MostlyHarmlessGive a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and then buy the pond. Tell him he can't have the fish, but he can fish for you and you will sell the fish and give him a very small cut, and then he'll say stuff like "I am hungry and my teeth hurt". Nobody wants to fish these days.
Petrichor ᚄᚔᚅᚐᚁᚆᚃᚒᚔᚂ
Adrian Riskin 
But they fish anyway because the cops make sure that the potential danger in not fishing is too high to chance it.
➡ @MostlyHarmless Are you Tim Ross or is this stolen?
Steve Delaney@MostlyHarmless def. Capitalism
Karen K@MostlyHarmless As long as working people suffer and the rich get even more morbidly rich, it makes perfect sense to Republicans.
Here’s another fishing analogy to make the point:
https://giraffe-vanilla-e9ae.squarespace.com/home/gop-the-pennywise-party
GOP: The Pennywise Party — Absurd-World Country
February 11, 2023 One thing the Republicans have done very well is to convince a huge bloc of the population that cruelty is cost-effective—that cruel policies are always the most financially responsible ones. But are they, really? At best, cruelty often turns out to be penny-wise and pound-foolish
Disco Sexual@karenvkelly
@MostlyHarmless
Morbidly rich - I love that. Throwing morbidly in front of anything just makes it sound extra awful.
EDIT: Great article, by the way. I don't consider myself liberal, but that article definitely lays out a better way of doing things than just punishing the (potentially) unworthy
@bezorp @MostlyHarmless I picked up “morbidly rich” from another mastodon thread and thought that was a perfect description, so I’ll definitely use that a lot going forward! Sometimes I also use “wealth depraved.”
semiquaver@bezorp @karenvkelly @MostlyHarmless curious why, if youlike that article, you wouldn't consider yourself liberal? honestly just curious not looking to start any kind of pie fight.
@semiquaver @karenvkelly @MostlyHarmless it's just a matter of labels. If I enumerated my values, then you might consider me liberal, but I've got too much pessimism in the status quo to apply the label to myself.
I see liberals and conservatives as playing the same game, but for different teams. Whereas to be actually progressive is to question the game as a whole.
That's a bit pat, but I'm running up to my character limit lol
@bezorp @karenvkelly @MostlyHarmless yes that makes sense. I suppose the labels are context dependent - I might describe myself as a liberal among relatively conservative ppl - as a progressive when among liberals -- and perhaps as a radical when among progressives... For a moment I had wondered if you weren't one of the elusive "persuadables"! - ppl in a conservative milieu who nonetheless respond to kindness-centered argument...
Jason BergmanOr as Terry Pratchett put it:
Teach a man to start a fire and he's warm for an evening.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
BobAges@MostlyHarmless I’ve always had a different pedagogical conclusion to that trope: … but give a person an AK47 and they can liberate the entire fishing area.
One World One People@MostlyHarmless The Messengers of God:
Great without measure or small and fragile, fierce with strength or timid and quiet as a thought are God’s messengers. *All teaching is of you trying to impart knowledge that you’ve gained from your efforts. It is by its very nature biased to your beliefs and thus easily corrupted or dismissed. The learning process is also of you and manipulated in the same way by your biases. Let go of those and find understanding with humility. OWOP
Great without measure or small and fragile, fierce with strength or timid and quiet as a thought are God’s messengers. *All teaching is of you trying to impart knowledge that you’ve gained from your efforts. It is by its very nature biased to your beliefs and thus easily corrupted or dismissed. The learning process is also of you and manipulated in the same way by your biases. Let go of those and find understanding with humility. OWOP
Final Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Give a man a fish, he'll have a nice fish supper. Teach a man to fish and he'll wipe out the bloody species.
CellyBlue@MostlyHarmless how’d you know🤔
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@MostlyHarmless Capitalism in a nutshell. You need to run an economics class!
ForeverAndaDay@MostlyHarmless just an fyi, your post got posted on r/latestagecapitalism on reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/comments/11clpsm
Brent 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦@foreverandaday @MostlyHarmless came here to say the same 😃 go mastodon!!
Brian Dear@MostlyHarmless Give a man a fish and after he takes it to a lab to have it analyzed for lead, arsenic, mercury, PFAS, microplastics, radioactivity, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, legacy pesticides, selenium, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers, he comes back and hands you the fish back, he’ll ask you why were you trying to poison him, after which he will call the police to have you arrested.
Lizard@MostlyHarmless Thanks to @ZachWeinersmith , I present the ultimate men and fish summation. (Notably, the final panel.) https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/teach-a-man-to-fish
Antonio Yon@MostlyHarmless Build a man a fire; keep him warm for a night. Set a man on fire; keep him warm for a lifetime.
rich@MostlyHarmless if you have a pond you should farm shrimp, not fish
Andii אַנדִֽי@MostlyHarmless That seems to be the strategy the Romans used re Lake Galilee in the time of Jesus. Funny how all this stuff is coming round again ...
CecilBothwell@MostlyHarmless
Excerpt from my upcoming book "Tha's Life."
Teach a man person to fish
I nearly fell into that trap. It isn't just men who angle, right? And then the first part of that old saw regarding the giving of fish? Well, in my experience, and not to be sexist, if you give a man a fish he'll probably throw it in a frying pan, maybe with some butter, whereas, again based on my experience, if you give a woman a fish she's more than likely going to season it in interesting ways,
@MostlyHarmless
Excerpt from "That's Life" continued (character limit):
perhaps douse it with lemon juice or wine, perhaps tarragon vinegar, maybe something zingy like red pepper oil, plus herbs and spices, and then bake it, or perhaps bread it with flavored crumbs of some Indo-European variety.
This is why, when I'm in fish-giving mode, I give fish to women and hope I'll be invited to dinner.
But as for the teaching part, I have my Mom to thank.
climate voter/degrowthist@MostlyHarmless The promise, going all the way back to at least Adam Smith is that with increased productivity, there will be more leisure. The work ethic is a culturally and religiously induced ethic. If there are people who gain satisfaction from their employment, good for them. But the tirade about people supposedly not wanting to work is implies there is something inherently wrong with wanting less work.
Kjetil Kilhavn@tmstreet @MostlyHarmless There is nothing wrong with not wanting to work, unless that is paired with an *expectation* of society providing you the same financial freedom as those who work.