Posted on 09/20/2007 6:37:18 PM PDT by knarf
How to catch wild pigs
There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some Exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.
In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a Strange question. He asked, " Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke."You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time.
One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch!
And you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
If you see that all of this wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends.
If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!
“And you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.”
Come on, that is absolutely not true.
One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch!
:::::
Socialists do not care. It is all about short term POWER AND CONTROL. These fools care about NOTHING but what they see in the mirror.
“And you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. “
Yep, totally untrue and for more than one reason.
...spreadin’ the word. :)
I thought from the title, Hillary was loose.
But, there is such a thing as a free pig; there are millions of them out there and Hillary know that better than anyone!
Then I'll come stampedin; up with my trusty Remington 870 slug gun, take aim and THAT'S how I catch wild pig--with Winchester Gold Partiton-nose sabot slug.
It should be absolutely not true. But Income taxes pushes up the costs of economic specialization. I do my own wiring, plumbing and I'm pretty much my own doctor. Because while it takes me 3 times as long. By the time I pay their before tax charges with my after tax dollars, it's cheaper to do it myself. I just hope I never need surgery.
Me too.
Good analogy, building 4 walls around the whole herd of pigs gradually. Better than the boiling frog analogy.
Now, I know or I think I know what you mean vis a vis doing your own electrical work, and I do (and sometimes enjoy doing) those things myself. To try to make the discussion as simple as possible, if you were a $500/hour attorney who happened to have electrical skills, it's possible that hiring a $50/hour electrician could be a very costly use of your time. IF, you had legal work to do during that time! If you were an unemployed attorney then you saved $50/hour. It's also a consideration that a pro can usually do the job in about 1/3rd to 1/2 the time of a skilled amateur and maybe 1/8th the time of a beginner.
Of course, all the calcs go out the window if you do this work yourself and totally blow it, creating damage, or even worse, injury to yourself. (not likely for electrical, but an amateur can break legs doing, say roofing) And then you have to hire the "pro" anyway, sometimes at greater cost than if you hadn't lunched the job. Ugh.
The real skill, IMO, is knowing what you're better off hiring external help to get done, and weighing that against your own costs in terms of time, possible screw-up > redo at that painful price you were reluctant to pay in the first place, and your learning-curve time.
I will tell you what absolutely burns me up, though. It is the notion that you cannot really know the competence of a so-called professional you hire or are intending to hire without becoming nearly as skilled as that professional. Because without that level of astuteness or something like it, you cannot know if a good job is being done. Before it's done. So, you not only have to pay the pro, you have to invest what's usually a non-trivial amount of time (at no compensation) educating yourself in the very field where you're hiring the pro. In most cases, you don't even know sufficient questions to ask to find out if a particular pro is the one you should hire. The best you can do is to get references, obviously, but I've been well hosed by pros who came with a good fat book of refs.
I know what you mean.
Maybe it’s just imagination or wishful thinking, but wasn’t there a time, where people took pride in their work, and wouldn’t dream of blatantly ripping someone off?
"When the exchange student finished, the liberal professor stared at the student as if he had three heads, a puzzled look of non-comprehension plastered on his face."
place mark.
Thank the NEA.
I have 5 ... all homeschooled ... Christian curriculum ... yoobetcha’ proverbs were/are a part of their thought processes.
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