The idiot and the coin

It is said that a city inside a group of people enjoyed the village idiot. A poor man of low intelligence,odd jobs and lived on alms.
Every day they called the idiot at the bar where they met and offered him the choice between two coins: one large of RÉIS 400 and one smaller of 2,000 RÉIS. He always chose the largest and least valuable, what was the laughing stock for everyone.
One day, a group member called him and asked him if he had not realized that the larger coin was worth less.
– I know, replied the fool. “It is worth five times less, but the day I choose the other, the game ends and I will not earn my money.”

One can draw several conclusions from this brief narrative.
The first: Who looks stupid, is not always. The second: What were the real fools of the story?
Third: Who is greedy ends up spoiling their source of income.
But the most interesting conclusion is: The realization that we can be good, even when others do nothave a good opinion about us.
Therefore, what matters is not what they think of us, but who we really are.
The greatest pleasure is an intelligent man playing the fool on a fool who plays the intelligent man (Chinese proverb).

Arnaldo Jabor, 2007

From a PhD dissertation on social money.

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