• Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right! - Isaac Asimov
  • World Fame takes a lifetime of effort. Though sometimes the fame preceeds the effort - Me
  • I cant understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm afraid of the old ones - John Cage
  • Nearly all men can stand adversity, if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - A. Lincoln

November 29, 2005

The law of leeching

Let’s say there is a plant which produces 100 units of energy a day. The plant requires 70 units a day for its own maintenance and 30 units to grow more leaves and branches. On the plant is stuck a parasite(leech) which also eats up its produce.

Now if the leech eats up 30 units a day, the plant never grows and both the leech and the plant stagnate.
If the leech eats more than 30 units a day, the plant will not have enough to maintain its current state and will gradually wither. Along with the plant the leech also dies.
If the leech decides to eat 10 units a day, the plant will grow. After some time, it might be producing 300 units a day, consuming 210 and having 90 spare. The leech can use all this 90 and stagnate or use less and have even more food later.

The moral of the story? Well, there are lots of analogies.

The business/economy of a country is the plant. The government is the leech. The message is clear. There are many who would want to eat away the so called "rich" and later starve to death by their own folly. They only survive because of the refusal of the "rich" to die.