The metaphor is not mine. It’s Aesop’s. Uncle Willie borrowed it, just lately. Every true fable has a moral, and here’s the moral to Willie’s story:
“Grasshoppers need Ants, but Ants don’t need Grasshoppers.”
Willie was working from a premise elucidated in today’s New York Post, why taxpayer-hostile big cities will not recover from their recent tantrums:
Why can they go so easily? Because for the first time in history, Internet bandwidth allows all or nearly all white-collar employees to work remotely.
Being stuck in or near cities and all their discontents was a link in the golden handcuffs of having a boastworthy corporate job. Now that link is broken, replaced by a link to a Zoom meeting – and there may never again be any reason to fear getting lice in your hair or vomit on your shoes.
Nice going, Grasshoppers. It will take decades and wrecking balls to come back from this…
