Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A parent reads the story of Robin Hood to a child: "So Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor." But the child starts analyzing the story critically. Robin Hood has a really nice home in the woods, a huge entourage, and a lot of money must go to overhead. No organization is perfectly efficient. And Robin Hood is only in charge because of "nobility" -- he claims noble blood. The child concludes: "So he's a self-appointed autocrat obstructing trade, taking money for himself, then giving a pittance to the poor for PR reasons." The parent, stunned, says "It's genius!" and then yells at the child: "Hey! You better not be considering a career in finance over there!" The child protests "But Daaad!" and the father responds "No son of mine!"

The Humor

The comic takes the beloved folk hero Robin Hood and deconstructs him using modern financial and organizational analysis, revealing that his operation looks a lot like a corrupt institution -- skimming from the top, using charitable giving as public relations, and justifying authority through inherited status rather than merit. The twist is that the child's cynical analysis, rather than being seen as a damning critique of Robin Hood, could equally describe the behavior of modern financial institutions and Wall Street firms that extract wealth while making token charitable donations for public image. The father's horror is not that his child has ruined Robin Hood, but that this kind of thinking would lead the child into a career in finance -- a profession the father clearly views with suspicion. The joke works because the child has essentially described the business model of many real-world financial firms while thinking he was just analyzing a fairy tale.

References

Robin Hood is the legendary English folk hero who, in popular retellings, steals from the rich to give to the poor. The comic plays on the historical detail that Robin Hood is often portrayed as a dispossessed nobleman (Robin of Loxley), which undercuts his populist image. The critique mirrors real-world criticism of charitable foundations run by wealthy individuals that spend heavily on overhead while distributing relatively little to their stated causes.