The Fox, The Farmer, and The Spector of Utility Deregulation

Once there was a farmer who had a hen house. The farmer didn't ask much from his hens, only some eggs for breakfast on Sunday, a nice chicken dinner for Christmas Eve, and a few dollars profit for any extra sold at the farmer's market each weekend. Now, in the fields and woods around the farmer's land, there lived a wily old fox who occasionally, when someone forgot to close the gate, or maybe a tree damaged the barnyard fence, would get into the hen house and steal a chicken or two. But the fox could not get into the hen house that often, not as often as he would have liked, and it was difficult to get the chickens out of the barnyard, even with a damaged fence or an open door. He had to settle for lucky breaks when he could get them. The occasional raid on the hen house by the fox continued on for many years, but, in the end, the fox was little more than a nuisance to the farmer.

The fox, however, was powerful hungry and really didn't want to work that hard for a meal, so he came up with a plan. One day, when the farmer was tilling his fields, the fox called out to him. "Farmer!" the fox called, "I have a great idea for the both of us that will make your hens that much safer!"

Now the farmer was suspicious, both because he had never before heard a fox speak and because he doubted the fox would really want to make his hens safer. But the farmer was a polite man and he figured there would be no harm in entertaining the fox's suggestion, even though he expected it to be laughably horrible, so he nodded him on.

"Okay," said the fox, "As you and I both know, every once in a while, I happen to get into your hen house and steal a few of your chickens. This, no doubt, is irritating to you, as a farmer who has worked his whole life for his chickens, and I expect you would like it to stop. So I propose to you that, if you leave both the gate and the hen house door open, it will attract foxes from all over the county, rushing to your hen house to get your chickens. This mass of foxes will cause such a fox fight that, in the competition, none of us will ever get into the hen house to steal your chickens, and you will lose chickens no more. By opening up the access to your hen house, you will essentially prevent any chickens from ever being taken again."

Now the farmer laughed and laughed at this suggestion, expecting it to be even less stupid than it was, and he followed his laughter up by trying to run over the fox with his tiller. But the fox, as noted in the first paragraph, was wily, and he knew that the farmer's land was not actually owned by the farmer, but that the deed was held by a board of pig bankers in town. So the fox journeyed to town and made a presentation, using his limited but inventive fox knowledge of PowerPoint. He craftily explained to the pig bankers the benefits of leaving the hen house door open so that foxes would compete, which, in turn, would make the farmer's land all the more valuable.

The pig bankers paid very little attention to the fox as they were more interested in an upcoming acquisition of their bank by the corporate wolf bank that was working its way through the sham regulatory commissions for the sake of appearing like it was being regulated. So they snorted for a while, and rolled around on the floor, and generally acted like pigs, until one finally said to the fox, "So whatta you want us to do about it?"

"You own the deed to the land," said the fox, "Get the farmer to open up the door to his hen house and begin fox competition that will increase the value of the hens, therefore increasing the value of your land."

Now the pigs liked increased value so, with no further questions, one of the largest of the pigs, a big boar who had won the blue ribbon at the county fair two years running, headed out to the farm to advise the farmer to open his gate and his hen house door so that the foxes would compete with themselves and leave the chickens alone. And, if the farmer did not comply with these steps that the fox guaranteed would increase the value of the land, then the pig bank would be forced to call up the deed.

The farmer, seeing little choice, opened his gate, opened the hen house door, and went to bed.

Of course, the fox strolled right into the hen house and began to eat the hens in a bloodbath of fowl proportions. When he could no longer stand the squawking, he began to steal the hens, breaking their necks and carrying the whole bunch of them, in groups of three, back to his fox den. Finally, the fox ate as many eggs as he could. As morning approached, tired and stuffed and on the verge of diarrhea, the fox smashed whatever eggs were left on the floor of the hen house so the farmer and his family wouldn't even have those, and he crawled, belly dragging the ground, back to his den, where he promptly vomited and passed out in a gluttonous stupor.

When the farmer awoke the next morning, of course, he had no chickens and not one egg left, and, of course, with nothing left, no other foxes ever came for competition. Without the extra money from the chickens and eggs at the farmer's market, the farmer promptly missed two mortgage payments and the pig bank foreclosed on his farm, leaving the farmer and his family homeless. The pig bank did see the increased value of the farm by simply leasing it back to itself at 300 times the value, instantly increasing its leased income and driving up the price per share that the wolf bank had to pay for the acquisition.

The fox, meanwhile, ate the rest of the chickens over the next few days, abandoned his den, and moved on to another farmer's place down the road to extol the virtue of leaving the hen house door open to fox competition.

Moral: If a fox asks you to leave a hen house door open in the name of competition and you do it, you are stupid. If the State does it for you, you are experiencing the thrill of a free market economy.