The Boy Who Cried "Wolf"

". . . when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones?" ~Samuel Croxall (c. 1690 – 1752)

     Aesop's Fable #210 is about a boy who, in his capacity as a shepherd guarding his sheep from wolves, amused himself by crying "wolf." Hearing the cry, the villagers ran to his assistance, only to be laughed at as fools for responding to a false alarm. However, when one day the boy's sheep actually were attacked by wolves, his cries no longer served to summon aid from the villagers, as they had by that time formed the impression that he was attempting to trick them as usual.
     The enduring popularity of this fable and its adoption into language as a well-known idiom (to "cry wolf," meaning to assert vociferously that there is danger when in reality there is none) attests to its power to represent a very general aspect of human life in society, and also says something about communication.
     But one aspect of the fable that is perhaps not often examined is the economic aspect. Why, for example, were the villagers unwilling to come to the boy's aid after being deceived so many times? Were they just angry at being made fools of? Perhaps. But the fact that they had been willing to come to the boy's aid in the first place might suggest a more complex explanation.
     Although such details are not reported in the fable, what was the economy of the village like?
     Were the sheep common property of the village, in which case having them devoured by wolves would probably represent a severe loss to the village as a whole, or were they owned by a certain individual? Given the antiquity of the fable and certain assumptions that seem to be made, I would guess the former. The boy then, had been entrusted with guarding the village's sheep.
     If the sheep belonged to the village as a whole, then every villager could be expected to have a strong interest in guarding them. Yet, they acquiesced in entrusting this important task to an unreliable agent---the boy who cried "wolf" when there were none. And according to the fable, after multiple such false alarms, the boy still continued in his role as shepherd; he wasn't fired!
     There could be various explanations for this. One that seems likely to me is that the village was so close to subsistence that they couldn't afford to replace the boy with a more reliable shepherd. In agricultural societies, it's typical for young children to do the work of shepherding while older children and adults engage in the more physically demanding work of agriculture.
     What can be overlooked in the simple understanding of the fable as a cautionary tale against mendacity is that the response of the villagers to the boy's crying "wolf" represented a significant economic cost to the village. If it were not so, the boy's crying "wolf" would not have enraged the villagers to such an extent. But it can be assumed that the meadow where the sheep grazed was a significant distance from the cultivated fields (this is typically so) and that the villagers lost a significant amount of time and energy in responding to the false alarms which manifested itself in lower productivity and perhaps even starvation. Agricultural production in a subsistence economy is a serious matter.
     Like the boy who cried wolf, epidemic modelers may someday produce an accurate epidemic model. But in the meantime, responding to their inaccurate models will come at a cost.