Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Nice little Story...

Little Helen

Once upon a time there was a young girl named Helen who bought a donkey from a farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

When the farmer drove up the next day, he said, "Sorry miss, I have some bad news. The donkey is on my truck, but I'm afraid he's dead."

Helen replied," Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said, "I can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Helen said, "OK then, just unload the donkey anyway."

The farmer asked, "What are ya gonna do with him?"

Helen said, "I'm going to raffle him off."

The farmer exclaimed, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

But Helen, with a big smile on her face, said "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody that he's dead."

A month later the farmer met up with Helen and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

Helen said, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $798.00."

Totally amazed, the farmer asked, "Didn't anyone complain that you had stolen their money because you lied about the donkey being dead?"

Helen replied, "The only guy who found out about the donkey being dead was the raffle winner, when he came to claim his prize. So I gave him his $2 back plus $200 extra, which is double the going value of a donkey, so he thought I was a really great girl."

Helen grew up and eventually became the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and no matter how many times she lied or how much money she stole from Kiwi voters, as long as she gave them back some of the stolen money, most of them thought she was a great person.

1 Comments:

Blogger Pete said...

I was just browsing the blogosphere and stumbled upon yours.
I dig this story.
It seems to be an elegant illustration of Kantian morality gone awry.

cheers,
pete

8:19 am  

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