MC 23: The Tale of the Herd and the Dung Beetles
In this myth of a Greek myth, Hermes, the mischievous god of finance, fates a herd of horses to value the frass of the dung beetle as highly as the beetle values the dung of the horse.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Tale of the Herd and the Dung Beetle
In a tranquil meadow, amongst the nymphs of the forest, roamed a herd of the finest horses. Second only to those that pulled Apollo’s chariot across the sky, they spent their time eating the finest grass then running, jumping and doing the things that horses do.
Next to expanding their number, their most useful activity was to occasionally stop, widen their stance, raise their tales and push out a rich, moist, spherical ball to the relief of the dung beetles below.
“Lunch” the beetles would roar. Rolling the green balls away, burrowing, shredding and doing all manner of useful dung beetle activities. Until natures mightiest tractors, powered by the dung, excreted their frass to the relief of the frass eating insects.
And so, it was and so it had been for millennia.
Each animal engaged in the production of their own being and, though it was no part of any animal’s intention, produced the dirt without which there would be no meadow.
“Absolute perfection” Artemis explained to her fellow god, Hermes.
Artemis the goddess of the wilderness , wild animals and the like admired natures transformations and transitions. Including those of the kind performed by the horse and the dung beetle. Her job was to enforce respect for the divine order played out in woodland.
“Zeus himself could not design a more efficient process” she proudly declared.
Hemes, the God of finance was not convinced. “But surely you’re mistaken” he smiled.
With promethean hubris, the mischievous god announced that he, being smarter than their father, could do much better.
“I wager; I could squeeze out even more efficiency” he winked. “I’’m an expert in finances you know. Trust me. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
With that, and loving a good poo joke, he transformed the herd so that from then on the horses and the beetles would each trade their waste for their supper. The horse no longer getting their nutrition and energy from the grass but by eating the frass of the dung beetle. They still had to eat grass to produce the dung but that was now just the means to an end. The real prize was now the beetle’s shit.
Hermes had cursed the horse to value frass as highly as the beetle valued dung. No more would they give it for free. The Beetles would pay for it with their frass.
The archer, having let down her guard for but a moment, watched on in disbelief.
It was not immediate but, the vast woodlands, once covered in lushness, became noticeably sparse. Grass, being the key ingredient of dung was transformed with previously unknown industry into as many balls as a well-fed horse could produce. For only when the horse had produced the beetle’s dinner would the horse’s dinner be produced. So it was that the horse ate the grass to produce more dung to fill its belly with the frass of the dung beetle. And the bettles having no use for their frass, gladly exchanged it for the dung.
“Miraculous” spouted Hermes.
“Observe Artemis.” Hermes, putting on the voice of his teacher, the learned Agathos Daimon.
“The more grass is transformed into dung, the more demand there is for that waste from an increasing population of dung beetles. Who in turn cannot but help but produce more frass to be exchanged with the herd. Look how much more dung there is for those miserable shit eating bugs to consume”.
“Now, that’s perfection” he exclaimed. “The demand for excrement in perfect equilibrium with the supply of excrement.” He paused, returned to his natural character and laughed, “You see, one man’s shit really is another man’s dinner”.
But Artemis did’t see the joke. Her only comfort was the knowedge that there was a natural limit to this abomination. Once the horse could eat no more frass and the beetle no more dung the madness would stop and the natural, divine order would return.
But Hermes being no one’s fool, had one more trick. “You’re right, but I know what to do”.
“Yes” frowned Artemis.
“Remember that Thessalian King. You know the one”.
“You mean that vandal, Erysichthon”.
“Yes! That’s the one. He made our sister so mad when he cut down that oak tree” squealed Hermes. Rolling about in the delight of the company of his even brighter idea.
Artemis, instantly realising what Hermes intended to do, raised her silver bow toward her half- brother, but it was too late. The god had placed the same curse on the herd and the bettles as their half -sister, the goddess Demeter, had placed on that king. The horses and the beetles hunger for the others waste would be unquenchable. No matter how much they ate of each others shit, it would bever be enough.
At first, the dung beetles could not believe their good fortune.
Once their kind struggled to find enough food, now excrement rained down every day like a clock work monsoon. An almost infinite variety of waste arrived every day. Completely undigested hay, oats, wheat was now all on the menu. Roots and all. There was a rich brown ball for even the fussiest beetle. All they needed to do was keep pooping frass to exchange for the dung. Pupae told from the earliest age that “if you don’t shit we all die. Keep pooping!” There were even schools dedicated to teaching the beetles how to produce the most frass.
Until, one day all they seemed to do is eat dung and produce frass. There was either no time to do anything else and when there was time, no one could remember how or why they once rolled the stuff. And as the day’s past, the horses, having no reason to eat anything nutritious, the herd turned to eating whatever took the least energy to process into dung. Afterall, it’s not like the dung beetles had much of a choice. They’d want what they got.
The beetles could be heard to complain that dung was not what it used to be. The wiser beetles even gave it a name “enshittification”. The dung became impossibly large but empty of energy. How could it be otherwise. Not only had the horses realised that they could get a better frass return from eating the poorest roughage than the best, but the beetles had stopped performing their unpaid work that had yielded the horse the highest quality grass and thus the juiciest turds. Turning the soil, transporting nutrients and providing all manner of “ecosystem services” to the once healthy meadow. Whose protest song grew faint any, as the Anemoi blew wind through what remained of the dying grass to produce no more than a melancholic whimper.
But the younger beetles had no time to complain. Cursed to want more and more horse dung, they found themselves having to process more dung just to survive. Unable even to find time to lay their larvae, there were now fewer beetles to produce the frass demanded by the horse in exchange for their dung that grew sour and tasteless.
“My insects and Hesperides apples are all gone. The fields are dust and poor dung beetles are turning themselves inside out to get through the day” exclaimed Artemis. “And, look at the state of my horses.” Emaciated they could barely move for the frass they horded up and protected from the thieving flies and each other.
The frass eating insects that had once eaten the beetles waste, fly around, pollinate and do other useful frass eating insect activities had all starved. The horses and beetles unwilling to share even the smallest morsel guarded their shit. Convinced that their lives depended on having the most frass and dung, there was no frass or dung for anyone else to use. The weight of all that would never be because of Hermes trick more than all of Midas’ gold. Stolen by the same theif who, when only a child had stollen Apollo’s horses.
Now, before Artemis own eyes, Hermes was slowly stealing the life from not only the herd but the whole forest.
The fields, now bare of all varieties of grass. The horses had turned to eating all the flowers. “The leaves will be next” she sighed.
In no time at all, Hermes had done what even the primordial deity Thanatos (who we met in MC19) could not. Thanatos was the personification of evil. The son of Nyx, merciless and indiscriminate, he was hated by the gods and mortals alike. Even Hades, the god of the underworld hated him. Where as death produced souls for the underworld, thantos stole the life that would never be born denying Hades his souls. Thanatos was responsible for emptiness from which no life springs, flows and dies before journeying across the Styx. The one true evil.
Though a minor figure in Greek mythology. Thanatos (or at least a version of him) has gone on to be far more infamous in the Marvel and mortal world.
But Thantos had never figured out how vanquish life itself. No sooner had he blown out one candle out and all the lives the lives that would never be born, than 10 more flickering flames would emerge. Thantaos could take a life and a world but never defeat life itself in the way Hermes had done. “I’ve been going about it all wrong” grinned the black theta. Hermes had stumbled on the darkest of nature’s secrets:
“Souls don’t rise if buried at the intersection of unfettered demand and supply.”
“Now, what to with this information" he wondered, as the mortals playing with fire caught his eye.
The panicked Artemis drew a deep breath and thundered so loudly that it startled the goats on Amorgos “What have you done, Hermes”.
But the god of finance was nowhere to be found. Recognising the great and terrible mischief he had caused he transformed himself into a snake and slid away. Leaving the remaing horses and bettles to eat temselves empty.
Today there’s only a barren empty wasteland where that tranquil meadow once flourished. Legend has it, that once there was nothing left to transform into dung, the beetles that had not died from over work producing frass, starved. And the horses, like the cursed Erysichthon, once there was no more frass, it is said that they consumed their own bodies until nothing was left of them - other than this apocryphal story.
“The business of business is to do the business .”
The Greek myths never shied from taboo subject matter. Next to Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother, the idea of developing a tale that explored the dangers of exchanging waste products seemed tame (if not a little crude).
Of course, the Tale of the Herd and the Dung Beetles is a myth of a Greek myth. It retells a story perhaps too unimaginable even for the ancient Greeks. Could there be anything more unnatural than horses and insects fated to eat each other’s shit.
But what if hidden in shit is a secret about the market and the mechanism of exchange. Afterall, kaka, cash and commodities have much in common. And whilst, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes never consulted their toilet for inspiration, much mischief might had been avoided had economists contemplated the ivory bowl.