To Fool a Wiseman
There once was a man who was digging for gold. And he discovered a large streak of gold, deep under his town. But he said to himself,
"if word gets out about this, everyone else will grab it". So he tried to devised a plan.
"It's easy to fool a fool", he said, "I've done that many times, but there are many wise people in this town, how will I keep them from finding this gold?"
After a while, he thought of an ingenious plan. He went across the state and purchased a large load of Iron Pyrite (fools gold). Then he then planted 1000's of pieces all over his town, in rivers, creeks, gullies, and everywhere one could imagine. Then he took the largest piece and ran down the main street screaming,
"I'VE FOUND GOLD, I'VE FOUND GOLD." This caused quite a commotion in his little town, and soon dozens of people were out with picks and shovels. In a few days, Hundreds of pieces were found, and there was a great euphoria covering the town.
But when people started taking their pieces to the town jeweler, he gave them the terrible news. "All FAKES." The people were heart broken, their euphoria turned into gloom. But the wise people of the town, who were cautious and not so quick to rush in, they got a good laugh out of it.
Then the man who devised the plan, slowly started to buy up all the fake pieces, all the Picks, shovels and other mining equipment. And every once in a while a real piece of gold would surface, but people would take it to him, instead of the town jeweler.
And the wise people of the town would scoff whenever a rumor came up about real gold. So he continued to mine to gold in peace, fooling both the fools and the wise men.