Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

The Mao of Pooh

This is both charming and amusing, though I suspect Randy Barnett and other free market utopians (who are delightfully mocked here) won’t be reading it to their children at bedtime. An excerpt:

“You wouldn’t”, Pooh asked in full throated solidarity, “have a little something for elevensies, would you Tigger?”

“But of course”, replied Tigger. “I have — and don’t tell that Kanga, or Roo, or especially Eeyore — a pot or two of Munny”.

“Munny?” asked Pooh, a little confused by the idea of promisory notes.

“Yes! Pots of munny!”

“Um, is money sweet?”

“Sweeter than honey!”, exclaimed Tigger, licking his lips in a predatory way.

“Goodness!” said Pooh, excited in a bear-discovers-something-sweeter-than-honey sort of way.

And so they set off for Tigger’s house.

Imagine Pooh’s surprise when Tigger proudly displayed his pots of money.

“Well, they’re not quite pots,” explained Tigger hastily. “They’re futures on pots. And although they smell like paper at the moment, they’ll smell much sweeter soon. Next month, the price of pots doing what they are, I’ll have more pots than sense”.

“How many pots will you have?” asked Pooh, discounting the future somewhat.

“Three”, said Tigger.

And so it was that Pooh discovered that his friend Tigger was merely the representative of a reactionary class, and needed to be overthrown.

The lesson of the story was that from a long-term point of view, all reactionaries are paper tigers. It is not Tigger but Pooh as the embodiment of the will of the people who is really powerful.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Designed with WordPress