The Fifty-first Fish

 Everybody's heard the old fish analogy about teaching people to fish being better than giving them fish. Creating a worker instead of a welfare case is the harshly worded moral of that pithy little allegory. Well, since returning to Canada I've seen a lot of changes and many have been of the economics variety. They have put me in mind of another fishing allegory. There are two fishermen, each with identical rods and tackle. There are 100 fish in the lake and they are the only guys fishing it. There is also a two-man net. They could fish individually with their rods and after a month or so they'd fish the lake out and let's say one fisherman is slightly better than the other and he gets 51 fish while the other only gets 49. The alternative behavior would be to use the net cooperatively and in a couple days they'd be able to get all the fish, divide them 50-50 and spend the rest of the year eating those fish while socializing till next fishing season with each other in leisurely brotherhood as men were created to do.

While this analogy has many weaknesses, perhaps the largest being the idea of catching all the fish rather than leaving some to make more fish thus creating an endless supply of fish, (which probably requires even MORE cooperation and brotherhood than the two-man net scenario above, but whatever) the point/moral/ethical lesson within is pretty easy to grasp. What kind of messed up society pits man against his brother to get a couple or few more fish than him, NONE of which either of them needs? I guess to make the analogy more accurate for most of what we call "civilized societies" nowadays, a large company under the control of the IMF/World Bank bought the lake and expanded it so there are more fish in it than ever. A THOUSAND fish, not 100. 

I'm not going to get into the whole mind-bending idea that some person, business, or financial entity can BUY a lake. That's pretty much the genesis of all the problems of the world. Personal ownership of anything in Nature is ludicrous, but here we are. But I AM going to get into one of my trundles away from the main topic. My blog, my trundles.

Anybody heard of Helium-3? It's one of the reasons why there just might be another space race. Already the Chinese are planning to mine Helium-3. At an estimated 3 billion bucks a ton, why not? And there is speculation that things are being done by competitors (US) to keep the Chinese from getting to all that Helium-3 first. Allegedly, the moon has enough Helium-3 to solve the entire world's energy demands for 10,000 years. So the Chinese are going to do that, right? Share it with the world so we will all have one less thing to worry about? No more energy problems? That'd be sweet, no? So that's what China is planning, of course. Or if not the Chinese, then the Americans, right? They'll do that, won't they? 

You know the worst thing about this suggestion? It's not that we all know it'll NEVER happen, it's that we are so mind-fucked that we think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. "China has every right to profit from their efforts to mine the Helium-3. So does the US. It's a legitimate investment." That is the kind of thinking I will henceforth call the 51st fish. 

I suppose just because there are no Moon creatures or aliens they have to kill to get at the Helium-3, or for that matter the rare Earth metals the moon has such a valuable supply of, it's not as barbaric sounding. But I'm sure they'd find a way of making our hearts and minds acquiesce to avarice-induced murder even if there were. They've done it in the past. Before our European ancestors roamed the continent, there were people basically living the two-man net model of high cooperation, low labour existence and you KNOW that "lazy, unacquisitive" culture had to be wiped out! The natives likened the white man's greed to their legendary creature called the Wendigo/Windigo that was constantly hungry and the more food (men) it ate, the bigger and hungrier it became. 

The fifty-first fish mentality. The idea that I am better than someone else because I own more than him/her, and/or I am better than someone else so I am entitled to more than him/her. It IS monstrous! It was considered a sickness by the natives. I concur with them and have many times referred to it as the "money sickness." It is a legitimate illness I believe. And, far from Covid, it is the most virulent virus in our world today. The fact that we don't acknowledge it as a medical condition has contributed to its success. But answer me this: do you think a person who would prefer the competing fisherman scenario to the cooperating fisherman scenario is RIGHT in the head? If you do, it is a symptom of the disease.

I don't think most people legitimately have it mind you, but we've gone to great lengths to justify it in our owners in Canada. I've heard so many people say that it is even "human nature." Those same people are not really practicing it, but are indentured servants/voluntary slaves to those who are and in the same breath they might give the ever serviceable, "I do it for my family" argument. They probably know what they do is not completely right and the people they enrich are worse and worse on up to the great overlords who don't even reckon value in monetary terms any more but countries. What they usually don't say is they do it for the LOVE of their family members. THAT, my readers, THAT is human nature, not selfish, acquisitive competitiveness.

But to continue the metaphor, the lake is artificially huge, the fish population is artificially bloated, and the fish are probably genetically modified to be artificially giant because we need more, right? Another myth. Businesses have never been more profitable. We probably "catch enough fish" by the end of January to feed ourselves for the rest of the year but our overlords create an artificial market for them so that they can be sold for the personal profits of the overlords and we can be kept obediently busy and too tired to revolt. What do they do with the excess fish? Why, they dump them in landfills if they have to. It really doesn't matter so long as those fish result in higher profits (and more world control) than the year before. Does THAT sound like a right-minded business model?

So I land in Vancouver and need to stay a night in the big city before visiting family on the Island. I find the cheapest hotel available: $150 a night. More with taxes. And now that I'm back in Canada I gotta TIP everyone who looks at me because we've also been bamboozled into believing that it's something nobler than a cheapskate business owner skirting minimum wage laws and passing on payment of his/her employee wages to the customers who are already paying too much for his/her product. Just the whole country in microcosm. 

Now, wages HAVE gone up, particularly minimum wage to the understandable disdain of the beleaguered middle class whose wages haven't gone up as dramatically. So some of the middle class think the problems of Canada can be blamed on an overentitled lower class. It's all part of divide-and-conquer keeping the middle class angry at the broke people of the country, not the rich who are the real fifty-first fishers. Voltaire once described the art of government as "taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another." The clever upper class who are the hands up the arses of the government diverts just enough money - a negligible amount relatively speaking - to the poor to distract from the massive Voltairean diversion from the middle class to the upper classes. Why would they be diverting it AWAY from themselves? Smarten up middle class! 

So there are many who blame the 150-dollar a night hotel on poor Canadians rather than record high corporate profits. But it's hard to blame the poor brainwarshed Canadians who think this way. They are not alone. This is going on all over the world. The key is if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Yesterday I went to look at a place that was a small step above a crack house. One bed, one bath, kitchen/living room. One washer and one dryer shared with the people in about 20 other units in the apartment. It's 100 years old if it's a day, smells like smoke, not likely tobacco, and while riding the bus I've seen a few questionable characters board the bus at the stop in front of the place. $1200/month. 

But all is not lost! I have a great opportunity at a security job. I have sent about 50 resumes out to various places including security companies, ESL businesses, and other things without so much as a PFO letter. (please fuck off) But, because I know someone who knows someone, I am going to hit the ground running here. I'll need to get a new driver's license and security guard license and update some certificates and sign some papers and do all the bureaucratic bullshit that accompanies everything nowadays but I'm in. Both the rise of the job referral and the endless certification and paper chasing are byproducts of an untrusting society that indulges the fifty-first fish mentality and discourages collaboration and brotherhood. 

I will not be working for the company I work at, but a company that took over the company then subcontracted security work to a cheaper company. Speaking of brotherhood, if ever there were two professions in desperate need of unionization it's security and the ESL industry! If you want some details, just read the blogposts I wrote while I was working security for 10 bucks an hour in Alberta. 12-hour shifts, shiftwork, non-stop walking and standing while wearing boots and a vest even in summer, wrestling people to the ground, getting kicked by people with casts on their feet, spat at, literally having shit thrown at me and being treated like livestock for starvation wages. That was 2012-2014. Nine years later I'll be making 8 bucks more! Almost a buck a year! Surely that will be a bigger increase than the cost of living, no? We shall see...

So there you have it: my righteous but pointless indignation with the nine years of changes I've noticed so far in my first three weeks back in Canada. There are some reassuringly unchanged things like the fresh air and friendly (however forced it may sometimes be) people, but the complaining is the therapeutic stuff for me and it was a primary reason for this blog.

Don't worry, positive posts are soon to follow. It snowed today! That's no April Fool's joke either! So the weather is to my liking. At least I got that going for me. Which is nice.