A Capitalist Fable…What’s Your Endgame?

Rob Chrisman, writer of the DailyBasis column on The Basis Point, ends his reports with a joke or humorous story. Sometimes they get buried under market news that’s more important, which is why we wanted to pull out a story from earlier this week. A simple but important story worth thinking about as you run your daily rat race, constantly contemplating your financial plan.

A Capitalist’s Fable (and one of my favorite stories)
A New Yorker was vacationing in Mexico where he met a Mexican man fishing on his little boat. In no time at all the Mexican caught quite a few fish and returned to shore. The New Yorker asked the Mexican what he does all day.

“Well,” the Mexican replied, “I wake up at about 10:00, go down to my fishing boat and catch enough fish for the day. Then I come home, my wife and I fry up some fish and have a lovely lunch on the beach. After that, we take a little siesta. In late afternoon, I usually go into town with my wife where I sometimes play in a mariachi band and we have dinner, drinks and fun with our friends. Often we stay in town until late at night.”

“But you catch so many fish with that one fishing pole,” observed the New Yorker. “Why don’t you buy some more poles and catch more fish?”

“Why would I do that?” asked the Mexican.

“So you could make money selling the extra fish and buy another fishing boat,” replied the New Yorker.

“Why would I do that?” the Mexican asked.

“So you could make even more money and then buy a fleet of boats.”

“But why?” wondered the Mexican.

“So then you could have an entire fishing fleet with nets and catch enough fish to build an industry.”

The Mexican still didn’t understand.

The New Yorker said, “Then you could come to New York with me, and we could take your fishing company public!”

“But why?” asked the Mexican.

“Don’t you understand?” said the New Yorker, “You would become very rich and then you could retire to Mexico where you could sleep in, fish, and stay out late at night.”