a shrine of insignificance

So a man rides a zebra into a town, the people there had horses but never rode them before. In fact there were hundreds of horse breeders all selling horses to the people in the town. The zebra rider opened a store to sell zebras and teach people to ride them. And business boomed. One of the horse breeders asks how managed to do it and the zebra rider showed him. Then the horse breeders began teaching their customers how to ride horses, since horses were cheaper, more plentiful, and better tempered the horse breeders began outselling the zebra breeder again. So the zebra breeder invented a rough saddle which made it easier to ride the zebra, however the saddle wouldn’t fit the horses, so the horse breeders made a new saddle. Eventually the zebra breeder was about to go out of business so he started making beautiful saddles that never wore out, the saddle was extremely easy to mount because it was a side saddle and it was permanently attached to the zebra. But yet his sales barely increased. So the zebra breeder began painting white horses with stripes and breeding them instead but still using the bolted on sidesaddle. In response the horse breeders came out with a much improved regular saddle without all the problems of their older rougher saddle. In fact since the “zebra” breeder was just using painted horses now, the horse breeders’ saddle could be placed on the zebra. Now the Zebra breeder declared that he was the #1 breeder because no one sold more horses then him. But if you think about it 1 person selling 20% of the horses really is still way behind the hundreds of horse breeders who were selling 80% total even though no one seller sold as much. And the fact remains that the zebra seller’s customers were riding painted horses with bolted on sidesaddles.

Filed under: General on June 9th, 2008