HUMOR: Political Economy in One Lesson
Huge withheld Remailer (nobody@huge.cajones.com)
Sun, 11 May 1997 08:25:19 -0700
FEUDALISM:
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
PURE SOCIALISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them
in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of
all the cows. The government will give you as much milk as
you need.
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them
in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by
ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens
the government took from the chicken farmers. The government
gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations
say you should need.
FASCISM:
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to
take care of them, and sells you the milk.
PURE COMMUNISM:
You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take care of
them, and you all share the milk.
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM:
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but
the government takes all the milk.
DICTATORSHIP:
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two
unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.
MILITARIANISM:
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
PURE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you
who gets the milk.
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY:
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for
it. After the election, the president is impeached for
speculating in cow futures. The affair is known as "Cowgate".
BRITISH BUREAUCRACY:
You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad.
The government doesn't do anything.
BUREAUCRACY:
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you
can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not
to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the
other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you
to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
ANARCHY:
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk for a fair price or
your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.
CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
HONG KONG CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed
company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law
at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated
general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax
deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are
transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands
company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the
rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The
annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an
option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the
fung shui is bad.
ENVIRONMENTALISM:
You have two cows. The government bans you from either milking
or killing them.
FEMINISM:
You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.
TOTALITARIANISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they
ever existed. Milk is banned.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:
You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol
of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two
differently aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of
non-specified gender.
COUNTER CULTURE:
Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to
have some of this milk.
SURREALISM:
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take
harmonica lessons.