gunfyter
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2002
- Posts
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Shouldn't take investment advice from a Movie.... I wish I had bought Gold at $20. Looks like it was good advice. Its up 80,000%
But what I was trying to do was relate the old man's explanation to the value of
The old man explains that the successful Gold Prospector must be compensated not only for his own labor ... but for the 999 others who did not succeed.
But what I was trying to do was relate the old man's explanation to the value of
...Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock ( Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith 1776ook 1, Chapter 10)
"...Fifthly, the wages of labour in different. employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them..."
The old man explains that the successful Gold Prospector must be compensated not only for his own labor ... but for the 999 others who did not succeed.
This is one reason why pilots need to be compensated well ... The lottery of Aviation is also far from perfectly fair and "under-recompensed".Wealth of Nations:
The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employment to which he is educated is very different in different occupations. In the greater part of mechanic trades, success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The counsellor-at-law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but that of more than twenty others who are never likely to make anything by it. How extravagant soever the fees of counsellors-at-law may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this. Compute in any particular place what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expense, even though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low, as can well be done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable professions, are, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under-recompensed.
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