"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Except, of course, the man will be assigned the most polluted stretch of river, where there are zero fish to be caught. This is modern capitalism's confidence trick; a bait and switch scam, literally.
Not that I advocate socialist fishing, by any means. Thousands of listless anglers sharing the same rusty hook and half-dead worm while sitting on the bank of a stagnant pond is no answer, either.
Fortunately, the future beckons with its promise of cloned meats. Hooray for science featuring James Watson and Francis Crick in chef's hats.
The man shall no longer need to learn how to fish to supply his dinner table with salmon filets. He is merely required to maintain and operate a salmon cloning laboratory in his kitchen. The man pours the contents of his salmon DNA sachet into the pull-out tray provided, adds water, sets the cloning switch to "grilled" or "smoked" and, hey presto, the man's gourmet salmon entree is served.
But can it really be that simple? God knows we still haven't discovered how to make a normal paper printer that doesn't constantly jam and break. You have to think that a meat cloning device in the home is going to be even more temperamental and unreliable. So much for technology.
I can make a carrot and stick argument for vegetarianism here, albeit rather elitist and convoluted: Give a man a truffle and you feed him for half an hour. Give a man truffle-hunting pigs and he can create a blog about his agricultural exploits and rural lifestyle, becoming an Online influencer selling advertising on his lucrative web site and able to afford whatever he wants to buy at Whole Foods Market.
Alas, I obviously have no solutions for economic inequality and the food crisis. But clearly neither does anyone else. Just give us the bloody fish already and get it over with. I guess we'll just have to make do with the frozen tilapia from Mexico.
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