Les singes et les villageois

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced
to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around,
went out to the forest and started catching them.
The man bought thousands at $10
and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers
stopped their effort. He further announced that he
would now buy at $20 for a monkey.
This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they
started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply
diminished even further and people
started going back to their farms. The offer increased
to $25 each, and the supply of monkeys became so small
that it was an effort to even find
a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50!
However, since he had to go to the city on some business,
his assistant would now buy
on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers.
"Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man
has collected. I will
sell them to you at $35, and when the man returns from
the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought
all the monkeys.

They never saw the man nor his assistant again,
only monkeys everywhere!

Merci à Guy, grand connaisseur de l'Afrique, qui m'a adressé ce texte