A teacher was tutoring a class of students when she relayed a story about a cruise ship capsized while at sea, and on the ship was a couple that managed to make their way to a lifeboat but realized there was only space for one. You’ll never guess what lesson they learned from the story.
A cruise ship met with an incident at sea. On the ship was a couple, after having made their way to the lifeboat, they realized that there was only space for one person left.
At this moment, the man pushed the woman behind him and jumped onto the lifeboat himself. The lady stood on the sinking ship and shouted one sentence to her husband.
The teacher stopped and asked, “What do you think she shouted?”
Most of the students excitedly answered, “I hate you! I was blind!”
Now, the teacher noticed a boy who was silent throughout, she got him to answer and he replied, “Teacher, I believe she would have shouted – Take care of our child!”
The teacher was surprised, asking “Have you heard this story before?”
The boy shook his head, “Nope, but that was what my mom told my dad before she died to disease”.
The teacher lamented, “The answer is right”.
The cruise ship sunk. The man went home and brought up their daughter single-handedly. Many years later after the death of the man, their daughter found his diary while tidying his belongings.
It turns out that when parents went onto the cruise ship, the mother was already diagnosed with a terminal illness. At the critical moment, the father rushed to the only chance of survival.
He wrote in his diary, “How I wished to sink to the bottom of the ocean with you, but for the sake of our daughter, I can only let you lie forever below the sea alone”.
The story is finished, the class was silent.
The teacher knows that the student has understood the moral of the story, that of the good and the evil in the world, there are many complications behind them which are hard to understand.
Which is why we should never only focus on the surface and judge others without understanding them first.
Those who like to pay the bill, do so not because they are loaded but because they value friendship above money.
Those who take the initiative at work, do so not because they are stupid but because they understand the concept of responsibility.
Those who apologize first after a fight, do so not because they are wrong but because they value the people around them.
Those who are willing to help you, do so not because they owe you anything but because they see you as a true friend.
Those who often text you, do so not because they have nothing better to do but because you are in their heart.
One day, all of us will get separated from each other; we will miss our conversations of everything and nothing; the dreams that we had. Days will pass by, months, years, until this contact becomes rare… One day our children will see our pictures and ask “Who are these people?” And we will smile with invisible tears because a heart is touched with a strong word and you will say: “It was them that I had the best days of my life with.”
regarding the third piece, “Sometimes a piece doesn't turn out as you intended. I was thinking a funny "Home Alone" sort of image, but yes, it turned out very creepy.”
An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.
Wait a minute. Collect your thoughts.
Presenting le’ arguments.
(Poster)
Dan Mitchell
There are five morals to this story:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
(Comments)
JRLOCK
1.0
Whether or not this really happened is irrelevant because it is entirely possible for such event to have taken place.
2.0
The author (or authors) of this story is confusing his understanding of socialist theory and his perception of applied social justice
2.1
The story seems to imply that the state of the class prior to applying the experiment gave everyone equal chance of success and thus is equivalent to capitalism. This would be true insofar as if the students were born into the same socio-economic class, with equal potential for obtaining the highest ability and skill, with equal health, intellectual, emotional, and physical makeup, except one’s freedom to choose one’s path. In reality, if a classrom could be used to represent America in the last two century, the classroom would be made up of the following:
– caucasian majority with a select few who come from extremely wealthy and educated families
– african american minority whoes families faced many years of discrimination and were denied economic opportunities based on merit and not based on connection
– asian, hispanic, and east european immigrants who also faced years of discrimination and were denied economic opportunities based on merit and not based on connection
2.2
Now, the wealthy caucasian students grew up in a highly educated household and received special tutoring outside of class. The african american students live in urban neighborhoods where crime is high and family are not as educated as their white counterparts. These students’ families cannot afford to move to more affluent areas because of the economic barrier of entry to those communities, such as higher property value and taxes.
2.3
Based on “capitalism” and applying the idea of economies of scale, whites will continue to get wealthier, be in positions of power, steer the system to favor their culture that systematically discriminates against the non-whiltes.
2.4
In conclusion, its not a matter of capitalism versus socialim. To view it that way is naive and simple-minded.
The question is about fairness. There is no conflict between efficiency and fairness. The level of efficiency should always be to the extent that maximum fairness is reached. Otherwise, efficiency, by definition, will always prefer those who are already better off over their lesser counterparts.
2.5
I recommend you read John Rawl’s Theory of Justice.
Kamikaze
Wow, what a stupid analogy.
First of all, this is not an indictment on socialism as it is an indictment on lazy students. In a real socialist society, no one would be able to get away with not putting in their fair share. Yes, socialism preaches that people should share the benefits of everyone’s work, but it also preaches that everyone share in the work as well.
Second, there is no rational socialist out there that believes hard work should not be rewarded. Socialists do understand that people need incentives to work hard, so we do believe that those who work harder should be rewarded for it.
What socialists believe in is that more of the work should be shared and more of the benefits should be shared. We believe that we should be working harder to raise everyone’s status, not just our own. That is not the same as saying everyone should receive just as much as anyone else regardless of the work they put in.
I will readily admit that pure socialism will never work. However, it is just as true that pure capitalism doesn’t work. You cannot deny the fact that it was under-regulation and lack of oversight that got the world into the current financial mess, and that is capitalism. I’m not saying our current system doesn’t work and I’m not saying capitalism doesn’t work, I am saying that we can’t err too far to the side of capitalism as it would lead to more problems like the ones we saw in 2007. I think adding a bit more socialism into our government would work great.
Socialism is getting treated very unfairly in the current political climate. Like it or not, we deserve a voice in the government just as much as anybody else does.
rjschwarz
The part the story undoubtedly leaves out is the number of students that dropped the course after the initial announcement, unwilling to put their future in the hands of those that believed socialism worked. You’d end up with the same results but probably quicker than if you had guards at the door preventing people from leaving. If you did that the socialism experiment might last a lot longer with the class surviving at a C- or so for some time.
Zorba
As a simple example it is incomplete. In their microcosm some students may have still continued studying, albeit perhaps with less enthusiasm. This is because they would realize that beyond this one class, one semester microcosm lies a more real world with a steeper effort/reward curve, where knowledge acquired in spite of grade still matters. But in communism, and to varying degrees in socialism, there is no real world alternative, as the entire social structure has the same effort-reward curve as the class. Under a flatter effort reward curve, people at the bottom become more complacent in a mediocre lifetime trajectory while productive people are discouraged from pursuing a lifetime of excellence by the mandatory confiscation of large parts of their effort. In addition they are typically further restricted in what they can do with the compensation they are allowed to keep: “No that car is too big, thus pays punitive excise taxes, no that single family house does not adhere to the grand Al Gore plan, therefore it again pays punitive excise taxes, no the water, electricity and other utilities you buy are priced on a progressive scale, no if you make more than this much you don’t get a student subsidy paid by others, you don’t deduct the interest on your house etc. All that works to further flatten the effort/reward curve and thus send the French Steve jobs to the Carribean sailing in the happiness of a more modest life, free of pitchforks and perhaps even a lower chance at pancreatic cancer.
Really, where is the French Steve Jobs?
Even an altruism motivated Steve Jobs in France would have little chance of turning out competitive products. Why? Because a Steve Jobs also needs a pyramid of motivated people working for him (executives engineers etc. of various competence levels perhaps) to create an Apple that turns out a product that represents a better overall value than product developed elsewhere in the world. And clearly, most people — even in France — are motivated almost exclusively by work aimed at benefiting themselves and their families, not some distant unknowns for whom a lifetime of mediocrity is enough. Hence, a flatter effort/reward curve means no French Apple and no French Steve Jobs.
anarkitty
One thing left unsaid here. Using your analogy, if you did not study better than F, you would go to the jail. So unfortunately it did “work” for decades.
Plus another post’s commenter.
Jason
I had this happen to me in high school, in a Civics class no less. The lesson wasn’t about the ills of Socialism, though it should have been. It was just an attempt to have the stronger students help the weaker ones. In my 4-5 person group, one of the less studious students was giddy when I was selected for his group. He instantly knew he was going to get a better grade when averaged with mine. Fortunately, our grades didn’t get averaged in the end, but initially that was the teacher’s intent. A friend and I went to both the principal and superintendent to argue against this new way of learning. During our discussion with the superintendent, we were told that in society you are only as good as your weakest link.
moonbows: produced by light reflected off the moon, refracting off moisture laden clouds. they often look white but can appear in long exposure photos. c:
A disappointed Coca-Cola salesman returned from his assignment to Saudi Arabia.
A friend asked “Why weren’t you successful with the Saudis?”
The salesman explained “When I got posted, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch.
But I had a problem. I didn’t know how to speak Arabic. So I planned to convey the message through three posters.
First poster: A man lying in the hot desert sand totally exhausted and fainting.
Second poster: The man is drinking Coca-Cola.
Third poster: Our man is now totally refreshed..
And then these posters were pasted all over the place.
“Terrific! That should have worked!” said the friend.
