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submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 62 points 3 weeks ago

Two economists survive a shipwreck and are stranded on a desert island. They're barely surviving on captured seagulls. One day they come across a big pile of seagull shit.

"I bet you $50 you won't eat that" says the first economist.

"No? You'll see" says the second, who scrapes up the pile of shit and promptly eats it, winning the bet.

A bit later they find another pile.

"Now I bet you $50 you can't manage to eat that shit!"

"Watch and learn!" says the first economist, who scrapes up the shit and eats it.

"Now that I think on it, we're now exactly the same we were at the beginning, only we've eaten shit."

"What? Not at all. We've increased the GDP of the island by $100!"

[-] [email protected] 57 points 3 weeks ago

That's a different one riffing on the same idea. The island one is they trade a suitcase or coconut or whatever back and forth until they've raised the island's GDP enough that it produces a boat for them to leave with.

[-] [email protected] 29 points 3 weeks ago

yeah i thought the shit eating economists were usually walking in a park

[-] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago
[-] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Look you just pay the crabs in coconut futures to work in a gig economy rewriting AI prompts for fish until you've accumulated enough fishcoins to hire some dolphin contractors to acquire a boat for you with a loan using the assumption that your island's economy will continue this pattern of infinite exponential growth as collateral.

this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
116 points (99.2% liked)

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