Joke about entrepreneurism and goverment

[kristianjohnsen]

JR, I suspect you'll like this one!



The kids filed back into class Monday morning. They were very excited.

Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on productive salesmanship.
...
Little Sally led off: "I sold girl scout cookies and I made $30," she said proudly, "My sales approach was to appeal to the customer's civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success."

"Very good," said the teacher.

Little Mary was next:

"I sold magazines," she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events."

"Very good, Mary ," said the teacher.

Eventually, it was Little Johnny's turn.

The teacher held her breath ...

Little Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher's desk.

"$2,467," he said.

"$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling?"

"Toothbrushes," said Little Johnny.

"Toothbrushes!" echoed the teacher, "How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?"

"I found the busiest corner in town," said Little Johnny, "I set up a dip
and chip stand and gave everybody who walked by a free sample."

They all said the same thing,

"Hey, this tastes like dog shit!"

Then I would say,"It is dog shit. Wanna buy a toothbrush?"

"I used the governmental approach of giving you something shitty for free, and then making you pay to get the taste out of your mouth."

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Joke about entrepreneurism and goverment

I actually don't give the government that much credit, and for the record they routinely operate at a loss (at least major western governments do). They are well intentioned incompetents doing the bureaucratic dance of protecting their payday and job. While the economy of scale promises huge efficiency gains, the lack of fiscal discipline while spending OPM (other peoples money), makes them easy targets for fraud and waste.

An interesting tidbit about government managed/directed economies. A recent study of the top 50 Chinese political leaders, revealed that they were all "Billionaires". So working in government was very very good to them. The western governments are not as overtly corrupt, but there is still way too much crony capitalism, and quid pro quo going on between pols and big business.

While a rather odd source I will echo a theme I first heard from the occupy movement, calling for separation of "business and state", unfortunately that message was lost in the poor signal to noise of their general chaos.

JR