{"id":312,"date":"2012-02-10T11:12:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T11:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=312"},"modified":"2018-12-12T08:45:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T08:45:05","slug":"the-good-the-bad-and-the-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"The Good, the Bad, and the Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived two brothers. The first brother was like an ox: strong, dutiful, and hard-working. The second brother was like a rotten apple \u2013 useless, menacing, and foul. The first brother set up a small enterprise, which quickly took root and sprawled. Soon, he needed to hire a helping hand. He could either employ his brother, who was wicked and lazy but still a relation, or a Stranger<\/strong>, who was diligent and qualified, but came from some distant God-forsaken place.<\/p>\n

At this point the story forks and you, the reader, have to choose which path to take:<\/p>\n

– You hire the stranger. The enterprise grows and prospers. Your brother vanishes in misery. Every Christmas you send him a present to an address he has long abandoned. This is the way of the capitalist<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

– You hire the brother. He might be trouble, but he is of your own blood. And, on his advice, you close your community to strangers. Soon, your brother stops showing up for work, and when he does, he shows up drunk. You quarrel and curse, but you stay loyal, and the enterprise rapidly goes into wreck. But you go down together. This is the way of the nationalist.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

–\u00a0You hire the stranger. Every month you take a generous slice from your profit and a big cut from the stranger\u2019s salary, and you give them to your brother. Your brother acquires a big TV, junk food addiction, and a feeling of entitlement that leads him to riot every time your contributions are late. But the enterprise survives, and your conscience is clear. This is the way of the socialist.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But, whichever path you chose, the good times come to an end, the fat years are over, and a long and painful crisis<\/strong> settles in the land.<\/p>\n

In the capitalist path of the story, the stranger, who has been saving during all the good years, buys the enterprise from you. You ask him to employ you, but he hires his<\/em> brother instead, and kicks you out of the door.<\/p>\n

In the nationalist path of the story, the good times were over long time ago anyways. You had long since reached the bottom, and\u00a0what only\u00a0keeps you alive is the deep hatred of your neighbors, which is the\u00a0one remaining thing that you share with your brother.<\/p>\n

In the socialist path of the story, your brother suddenly feels the pain when your monthly contributions dry up. He accuses the stranger of stealing his job and having no right to be here anyways and causing too much trouble altogether. He starts to pester you, to beg, and to threaten. Finally, you succumb, kick out the stranger, and hire your brother instead. But he has never done an honest day of work, so he quickly develops back problems and sues you for damage, which drives the enterprise to its end.<\/p>\n

So what is the moral<\/strong> of this story?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know, you tell me, I\u2019m just the stranger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived two brothers. The first brother was like an ox: strong, dutiful, and hard-working. The second brother was like a rotten apple \u2013 useless, menacing, and foul. The first brother set up a small enterprise, which quickly took root and sprawled. Soon, he needed to hire a helping hand. He could either employ his brother, who was wicked and lazy but still a relation, or a Stranger, who was diligent and qualified, but came from some distant God-forsaken place. At this point the story forks and you, the reader, have to choose which path to take: – You hire the stranger. The enterprise grows and prospers. Your brother vanishes in misery. Every Christmas you send him a present to an address he has long abandoned. This is the way of the capitalist. – You hire the brother. He might be trouble, but he is of your own blood. And, on his advice, you close your community to strangers. Soon, your brother stops showing up for work, and when he does, he shows up drunk. You quarrel and curse, but you stay loyal, and the enterprise rapidly goes into wreck. But you go down together. This is the way of the nationalist. –\u00a0You hire the stranger. Every month you take a generous slice from your profit and a big cut from the stranger\u2019s salary, and you give them to your brother. Your brother acquires a big TV, junk food addiction, and…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Good, the Bad, and the Stranger<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[113,222,326,431,612],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-52","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1020,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=1020","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":0},"title":"Immigration and voting for the radical right in Andalusia","date":"December 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote a short text for the European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) blog on the link between immigration presence and voting for Vox, a relatively young radical right party, in the Spanish region of Andalusia.\u00a0 Full text is here, see also this post from 2015 about a similar link with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration and asylum policy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/and_vox2_europp.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":837,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=837","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":1},"title":"Immigration from Central and Eastern Europe fuels support for Eurosceptic parties in the UK","date":"May 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Combining political, demographic and economic data for the local level in the UK, we find that the presence of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is related to higher voting shares cast for parties with Eurosceptic positions at the 2014 elections for the European Parliament. 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Unlike problems like inequality or the environment,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "EU governance"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":544,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=544","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":3},"title":"Ethnic job discrimination in the Netherlands","date":"October 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I have more than one reason to care about job discrimination based on ethnicity in the Netherlands. A new study shows that there is plenty to worry about. In short, the researchers sent identical job applications varying only the name - Dutch vs. ethnic (Antillean, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan). The 'Dutch'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Field experiments"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":810,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=810","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":4},"title":"Visualizing asylum statistics","date":"May 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: of potential interest to R users for the dynamic Google chart generated via googleVis in R and discussed towards the end of the post. Here you can go directly to the graph. An emergency refugee center, opened in September 2013 in an abandoned school in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo by\u00a0Alessandro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/dynamic-asylum-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":616,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=616","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":5},"title":"The most successful party family in Europe?!","date":"December 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The populist radical right constitutes the most successful party family in postwar Western Europe.\" (Cas Mudde, Stein Rokkan Lecture published in the latest issue of the European Journal of Political Research) I hope this is a typo or some other type of unintentional misunderstanding. How can the populist radical right\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Voting and elections"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}