Aesop on "The North Wind and the Sun," Old Rabbis on Stolen Bricks — and Junk Mail

 

    I grew up on Aesop's fable of "The North Wind and the Sun" and the rabbinical parable of the bricks. In the fable, the North Wind and the Sun get into a contest to see who can get a man to remove his cloak.

    The North Wind blows and blows and then blows some more and harder, and the man just wraps his cloak more and more tightly. Then it's the Sun's turn, and the Sun turns up the heat, and the man takes off his cloak. MORAL: The same as the one that went into English as "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," which I'll throw in since what interests me isn't that MORAL but the behavior of the North Wind: failing in a ploy and then repeating it and repeating it more strongly.

    The rabbinic parable has a guy thinking about moving into a city and meeting and being treated very nicely by his future neighbors. So he decides to build a house there and gets materials, including a large pile of bricks. Then the night before he's to start construction, the neighbors come over and each one steals a brick — one brick — until the pile is gone, or pretty much. Next day the guy comes over, sees the theft, and laments the loss and demands tracking down the thief. The neighbors come by and ask, rhetorically, "What thief?" And the first one adds, "I took one brick. Surely you're not such a petty cheapskate you'd make a big deal over one lousy brick?!" No simple MORAL here, but a traditional conservative view about social responsibility and how little misdeeds for individuals can add up to a significant social evil. (Also an important idea for questioning the right of each individual gas-station owner to determine who may or may not use his toilets if the upshot is that Black families had problems finding convenient toilets when driving, say, from Florida to DC. Or each arguably legitimate refusal to cooperate with a public health measure if the cumulative upshot is the spread of disease.)

    There's much less at stake here. Here it's my repeated complaint about the repeating and repeating and repeating of individually okay or even admirable e-mail and US-mail appeals for money and support if the cumulative upshot is to overwhelm people (e.g., me). In my case, with rare exceptions, I've just stopped responding, tossing them all (all such mail: into paper recycling or MacTrash): doing without in the case of commercial appeals; just repeating my past donations with charitable appeals; and putting almost all my political money into a local political group that doesn't often bother me for money (and has long since sold my contact information).

    So: Sending me more electronic or hard-copy junk-mail appeals isn't going to help you, gals and guys — you're just doing the North Wind thing. Plus kind of the opposite of stealing bricks: piling up (figuratively burying a guy in) appeals.

    I see no solution here, although it's another reason for better public financing of public services so we need fewer charities, plus public financing of elections, with spending limits. Well, and the US Postal Service should charge junk-mailers more than publications, people mailing bills, and actual letter-writers — and there's got to be some way to charge people per item of electronic mass mailings.

 

    Taking as a funding model the idea of Constant Contact — actual name of actual firm — may not work so well. 

Flies: Watch Out for Honey / Consumers: Watch Out for Deals

"You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

— Poor Richard's Almanac (traditional)

 
         On the web on 27 August 2011, someone posting as "Jeremy" noted "that you actually attract more fruit flies with vinegar than honey, because the acetic acid in vinegar makes them think they sense fruit," but he (?) was good enough to note also that even if that bit of natural history is true, the proverb is still that you can deal more effectively with people if you are sweet to them than if you are sharp and biting. The upshot of the saying is the same as that of Aesop's fable of the Sun vs. the North Wind (Boreas), competing to get a man to take off his cloak. The more and harder Boreas blows, the tighter the man wraps his cloak; when the sun shines bright and hot, the man, of course, removes it.

         From the man's point of view, however, either way he's ultimately doing what some minor deity wants him to do, even if in basking in the sunshine he's doing what he immediately wants to do. But let's move to the point of view of the flies.

         I'm not old enough to have ever seen people try to kill flies by putting out honey or vinegar, nor even old enough to remember flypaper. I do, though, remember fly ribbon, also called fly capture tape: "a fly-killing device made of paper coated with a sweetly fragrant, but extremely sticky and sometimes poisonous substance that traps flies and other flying insects when they land upon it. "

         You can spray insecticide and kill flies efficiently (until they mutate and you get immune populations), and you can try to smash flies with newspapers. It's arguably more effective, if esthetically pretty nasty, to capture and poison, or capture and starve to death, flies with sweet sticky stuff.

         I have been thinking about such things because I have a "Rewards!" coupon from Office Depot that expires shortly, one for $24.48, and I will almost undoubtedly go to Office Depot and cash it in and buy computer printing cartridges I don't really need yet.

         And there's a fair chance that while in the store I'll see something I don't need at all but will come to want and will buy.

         That is, of course, the whole idea. If coupons really got customers to spend less money, companies wouldn't give them out.

         Like most people, I prefer to be warmed by the sun on a mild day rather than be blasted by the North Wind. Like most people, more relevantly, I prefer to be bribed rather than coerced.

         Still, I don't like to be manipulated, and I am quite certain that the bribe from Office Depot — or the Kroger Corporation or Bed, Bath, and Beyond — will end up costing me one way or another, even if, to my surprise, the coupons and other deals end up saving me money.

         'Cause unless you're Scrooge McDuck and get your kicks rolling around in money, money itself isn't your goal. What we want are the things money can buy, and for me, one of the major things money buys is some of my freedom and sense of control.

         Mainly, money buys freedom from money worries that are endemic to most strata of capitalist society. Having modest but secure income, and being careful with my money — not cheap but definitely tight — I've been able to live most of my life not having to worry much about not having money. I also haven't had to worry about just how to invest and conserve my fortune since having a modest but secure income I didn't have enough money to invest and conserve.

         It has made little sense, and continues to make little sense, for me to sacrifice any of my time to money issues to save a few bucks.

         Ah, but that $24.48 coupon is a temptation. Cheap people don't want to spend money; we tightwads will spend, but we get very upset if we waste money, and some place buried deep in my brain, probably just north of the limbic system, there's a small set of over-trained ganglia convinced that not cashing in a coupon for $24.48 is wasting $24.48 and — and those brain cells are sending out the neurological equivalent of "The horror! The horror!"

         I finally gave in to the Kroger Corporation, so I have a Ralphs card — Kroger's in the West is Ralphs — and also a card from Von's, another grocery chain; grocery stores make you an offer very difficult to refuse: you either allow them to track your purchases or you pay significantly more for their products. Freedom is valuable to me, but not paying $4 extra per pound of shrimp, which was the bit of extortion that got me to finally give in and get the card.

         I have done this much however, especially since shopping at a supermarket has become a rat-running exercise in figuring out a maze, as the rat: I make a shopping list of basics and try to buy the same basics every time, with only minor variations. So KrogerCorp can track my purchases, but the data, I hope, will bore even a computer program.

         "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" and, all things considered it's better to be bribed than coerced. Still, with all the PR people, advertisers, politicians, and propagandists trying to get our votes and our money and our "hearts and minds" — I'd just as soon do without both for. Or, if I had to choose, I think I might prefer an outright threat (if nonviolent) to a bribe.

         On the other hand, I pass Office Depot fairly regularly, and $24.48 is almost twenty-five dollars ….