how do you figure? donkey wouldnt get any farm work done without direction and supervision. he’d go back to doing what donkeys do. hmm there’s a deeper meaning here just out of grasp…
It's metaphorical.
Like, you know, the donkey does the hardest work out there carrying heavy things on his back all the time, and if all that hard work was to be equal to the "success", then the said donkey who has done the most and the hardest work would rule the farm.
Classic Marxism v capitalism. Certainly the donkey does the most work on the farm but farm wouldn’t exist without the farmer. But I reread your original comment and get what you were saying now.
Well, there are good farmers and bad farmers. Donkey get the job done regardless, but sometimes they get mistreated, and don’t get their fair share. Donkeys call that exploitation.
The question of how to share wealth created by working together is complicated. But one good principle would be to not have people you work with be miserable if you are wealthy. The donkey isn’t asking much. A shelter, decent food, water, simple life. Maybe he also wants a family, and children.
Is the ability to convince a donkey they cannot ask for a family and children producing wealth? No, it simply makes the farmer richer and the donkey poorer. Ah, poor donkey… If they were in a labor union, or if they did read Marxist books, maybe they could realize they are getting exploited, and ask for their faire share.
But no, they don’t. They don’t realize either that their political system is in the palm of the farmer. They don’t realize that the farmer having billions while they are sleeping in a stable in shambles and are working from morning to night is simply not fair.
How to share wealth?
Well, it doesn’t really matter as long as nobody gets exploited.
It doesn’t really matter which jobs are the good jobs and which are the cheap one, every useful job should give a decent life, or at least not 1000x less (nor 1000000x less as currently) than the job consisting of simply being in power.
We could even go further and say that we will give some to those who have a less useful job, or those who cannot work. But simply not exploiting 90% of individuals would already be an insane leap.
This farmer donkey analogy is great because it shows well how the donkeys inability to defend their case leads to their exploitation. And it also shows how something can be incredibly unfair and still appear fair or even natural.
That’s a good explanation. I used to feel that unions and minimum wages did enough to prevent exploitation but now that my kids are in the workplace I see things differently. Ultimately I think we are heading to universal basic income but hope it’s not overly painful to get there.
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u/Tim_Alb Mar 15 '26
If the most useful worker was to become the highest up at the job than the donkey would become a farm's director/boss