I legit have a copy of this story somewhere that ends with a “the moral is…” statement along the lines of “that’s why you should work hard and not be lazy”.
Like, what? We did not cover the work ethic of the pigs at all here. As far as I can tell, they each built an entire goddamn house! What about the wolf?
The version I remember being told had the first little pig just look around and see straw, the second little pig had to go gather sticks from the nearby woods, and the third little pig had to actually make the bricks over days.
No some of the capital that paid for the pig’s upkeep during his build period was the proceeds from natural resources that were conserved during a season of plenty to be sold in a time of scarcity. If you want to call eating less in the summertime “labor” with a capital L you can while I sit here and laugh. Capital is just liquidity. You can generate it by labor but that doesn’t make it the same as labor or the property of others who have labor to give.