Story of the Mexican Fisherman | Hacker News Reader

Story of the Mexican Fisherman

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38 pointsctingom25 comments

I hated this parable the last time I read it too. It’s sloppy. It’s based on the false premise that there is no difference between a pauper lounging on the beach and a millionaire lounging on the beach. However, the millionaire’s life has a lot less risk. He has a longer life expectancy, and so do his loved ones, because he can afford quality food and access to medical care. He lives in sturdier dwellings that are more robust against storms. He can afford an education for his children. He can help others who are in need. He can put his money to use to build cool and interesting things.

The fisherman is one unexpected disaster away from death. He, his children, and his wife are powerless in the face of a risky world. I suppose it is noble that he is able to stay content when his children die of preventable diseases, but I am sure he would rather be saved from doing so.

If the fisherman extended the effort suggested by the MBA, he wouldn’t be back at square one as the parable suggests. Rather he would be in a new place, one that I would find preferable.

Rubbish. Again.

You're right, if one takes the parable literally. No doubt very few subsistence fishermen would recognize themselves in the story.

But I suspect that, like most parables, this one isn't meant to be taken literally. It's illustrating a psychological point, the folly of treating life as a means to an end. There's great risk in devoting one's life to something not for its own sake but because one assumes that, somehow later, happiness will result.

I appreciate the parable because, like many people, I need to be reminded to examine that assumption.

Personally, I prefer to redefine "success" to be whatever I already have, thus at all times am I am a success!

Well, success actually is the ability to be able to redefine "success" to be whatever you already have. So, you succeeded there too.

I like the point that you took away from the parable. However, most of the time someone shows me a parable like this it is to criticize the modern capitalist, consumptionist lifestyle. These critics idealize the primitive and believe that economic progress has made us corrupt and unhappy (although, strangely, you never see them moving to any of the primitive countries they idealize). Rarely do they understand the full consequences of the ideas they support. Nothing makes me angrier than the anti-materialists except maybe the legions bitching about income-inequality, which strangely often are the same people.

I dislike the parable for reasons different than yours. I do see the point though, and it is humorous enough to make me not "hate" it.

The whole process the MBA mentioned revolves around increasing profits as an end. If that MBA was a bit more compassionate, his strategic mind would make him capable of utilizing resources for greater distributed benefit; he could help feed extra mouths than simply one man and his family. Now that would be an important difference. If the MBA were more compassionate, it really wouldn't be about minimizing the risks he faces daily. Essentially, it wouldn't be about utilizing his skills to concentrate wealth into his hands; it would be about applying his talents for greater efficiency. Obviously, I read it from a romantic POV, and dislike it because both perspectives are unabashedly self-serving.

I first heard this story from a kid who tried to philosophize to me his hedonistic lifestyle; he was so myopic for a college student, I couldn't imagine how he was brought up.

I see your point about money mitigating certain risks, however, people engage in risky behavior all the time in order to gain some joy. Skiing, skydiving, and if you want to get closer to home, driving a car are all risky behaviors. The point of the story to me at least is that the fishermen made the very same value vs. risk judgments a businessman might make and decided that the risk of his lifestyle was worth the reward of being able to enjoy his family and friends fully right at that very moment, rather than in some distant hopeful future. Both are fully valid ways of looking at the world but the two men simply made different calls based on what was most important to them.

+1. Poverty is only agreeable to those who don't have to live with it.

Ah, those adorable happy poor people in less developed countries. So much time to relax and enjoy life! Overfishing, consolidation in the fishing industry, inadequate health care, rising grain prices (which in the past couple years have caused tortilla prices to double), crime ... none of these could possibly affect the happiest people in the world, the fishermen of Mexico! Let's all move down there and buy fishing boats! Surely there are enough fish to feed all our families, forever!

This is an adaptation of the short story "Anecdote on the Decline of the Work Ethic" (German: "Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral") by Heinrich Böll.

I would highly recommend the original over this, but I unfortunately can't find a good translation of it. Still, for those who read German...

Awesome; habe das vorher gelesen, aber habe ich doch den Titel vergessen.

Something I've always wondered, is if the biggest requirement for being an internet entrepreneur is a computer and internet connection, are there a lot of hackers/programmers living in Mexico/the Caribbean?

The biggest requirement is having encouragement from people around you or examples of success that seem achievable.

Without these, hacking isn't so alluring.

I would amend that to "The biggest requirement is having encouragement from within". Without that, people around you won't make much difference.

Hacking has always been VERY alluring to me, no matter what anyone else thought. I started long ago, before it was cool.

Well, it also requires the ability to spend a lot of time writing code. There aren't a lot of Mexicans who really work a few hours a day and spend the rest of their time in leisure. Most of them work very hard and just barely scrape by.

When savings have zero value, not working makes sense.

Enforceable property rights matter... and so does a stable economy....

By most accounts some (not all) but some primitive people had quite pleasant, stress-free lives. The African pygmies, for instance, supposedly only hunted a few hours out of the week and otherwise lolled about, quite happily. But most Africans of that type were wiped out by the Bantu.

The problem, of course, is that the survival (and expansion) of the fittest kicks in. Eventually, the people willing to putter around in an open boat are bought out, undersold, or otherwise replaced by fishing companies. Then, land by the shore hits 500K per quarter acre as people with hardworking jobs push up the price.

I heard that the problem with the pygmies hunting for 10 hours a week was that this figure was noted by anthropologists that were driving the pygmies around in trucks!

survival of the fittest? hunter/gatherers were replaced by settlers largely because of lack of resistance for deceases spread from animals to settlers. pretty painful way of becoming fitter and quite odd way of defining the word.

What do you think Darwinian fitness is?

i am fully aware of what it means, which i think is obvious from what i wrote.what i was trying to communicate was that it was a step backwards for most people in most ways which makes it misleading to speak of fitness.of course you can argue that societies takes the place of organisms in this case but i think the term would be misleading even then, since it happened quite circumstantial

http://notexactlyrocketscience.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/shor...

still wish you were a pygmie?

Interesting, however, the following quote makes me suspect the researchers made the usual error of using average life expectancy, which is very distorted because of high child mortality. Would be interesting to see more precise numbers.

"Pygmies around the world are short in life expectancy as well as height, with the average adult dying at 16-24 years of age. Only 30-50% of children survive to the age of 15 and less than a third of women live to see menopause at 37."

reminds me of Steve Pavlina's latest article: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/03/the-most-direct-sol...

If you liked this story you should really pick up the 4 hr work week.

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