Wisdom, sleeping..
  • Home
  • Four Pillars of Wisdom
    • Why Wisdom, a Provisional Foreword
    • Doubts
    • Ethos or How I Learned Some Wisdom
    • The "State of the Art" - an impression
    • A Nutshell History of Worldly Wisdom
    • What is Wisdom?
    • The first pillar of wisdom: wise knowledge
    • Good Judgment is the second pillar of wisdom
    • Wise Conduct is the third pillar of wisdom
  • Articles
    • Secret Life of the Obvious
    • Powerful inaction, conspicuous absence, bountiful void
    • The Power to Make Things Simple
    • Three kinds of Criticism
    • Critical thinking is disobedient, not correct
    • Strategy of Surprise
    • The Rectification of Meaning
    • The n plus minus one principle: higher, wider, different...
    • The Fascination of Paradox
    • A choice of choices
    • Des choix de la spiritualité
  • Blog
  • This reminds me of a story

Laws of the market

12/7/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Let’s face it. There is too little honesty in commerce. Too often, for some perverse reason, stealing from the buyer in the marketplace is called business. This reminds me of a story:
​
A sunny winter day is excellent for selling donkeys. Fat, grey donkeys against the white snow. Buyers are well disposed in the sunshine and decide faster because of the cold. And the donkeys like it too. Young Nasreddin was exercising the noble donkey trade, with much success, to the amazement of the competing horse-traders. For his donkeys were the cheapest on offer.

One evening, an old horse-trader took the Hodja aside:

“Tell me young friend, in all confidence, how do you manage such low prices? In full honesty I tell you, I am an old timer and can’t beat you. I, myself, don’t pay my workers, steal the fodder, cheat on the weight and quality of the beasts, elude the taxes and your donkeys are still cheaper! How come?”

“Since you ask, I will tell you. You steal too many things. I only steal the donkeys.”

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    111 teaching stories of Nasreddin Hodja,the wise fool of the East

    Retold by Ioan Tenner

    Archives

    July 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

© 2011 - 2020 Ioan Tenner & Daniel Tenner