Opinion: There Are No Free Lunches
Intro: We face problems in India today because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living
There was a chemistry professor in a college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the laboratory, the professor noticed one young man (an exchange student) who kept rubbing and stretching his back as if it was hurting. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He said 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 regime.
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?”
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The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke. The story goes like this he said. “To catch wild pigs you have to find a suitable place in the woods and start the process by putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day 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, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then 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 this is exactly what he sees happening in India. The government keeps pushing us towards Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as Food Security Act, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, MSP, welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. and we keep loosing our freedoms just a little at a time.
One should always remember two truths: “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.”
Hence, what we learn from the story finally is that: “In India the problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living.” But, God help us all when the gate slams shut!
—Bureau Report
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