Saturday, December 06, 2008


Isms and Ocracies

Cows & Politics


FASCISM: You have 2 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.

APPLIED COMMUNISM You have 2 cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP You have 2 cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. The government fines you for illegally keeping 2 unlicensed farm animals in an apartment

CAPITALISM You have 2 cows. You sell 1 and buy a bull, which you use to breed, with the other cow. Then you create a great website and start offering to export sperm from the bull to anyone and everyone, especially emerging markets, over the Internet. After a few weeks, your company completes its IPO on NASDAQ, and a few brokerage firms start coverage with a strong buy rating for this wonderful new Internet stock. Your stock zooms from the $0.10 per share initial offering price to $110, when you sell. The stock plummets back to $0.10 a few months later when the dopes who bought it realise that your business has no earnings and never will, despite the Internet connection. Several law firms and the SEC bring various civil and criminal actions against the company, all of the officers and directors and (of course) you under various fraud theories. You quickly settle the civil cases so the lawyers get paid, but you still have plenty stashed away. You plead nolo in the SEC case, and you are sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which you actually serve 7 weeks. When you come out, you can't resist the temptation to buy 2 chickens. Then...

HONG KONG CAPITALISM You have 2 cows. You sell 3 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 an associated general offer so that you can get all 4 cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping 5 cows.
The milk rights of 6 cows are then transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all 7 cows milk back to the listed company and proceeds from the sales are deferred. The annual report says that the company owns 8 cows, with an option on 1 more. Meanwhile, you kill the 2 cows because of the bad feng shui.

TRUE DEMOCRACY: You have 2 cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. Your neighbours vote for someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY The government promises to give you 2 cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".
BRITISH DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government does nothing apart from refusing to give “obese” citizens free NHS treatment for eating the sh….....

BUREAUCRACY You have 2 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.

FEMINISM: You have 2 cows. They get married and adopt a calf.

TOTALITARIANISM You have 2 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-mongerish, intolerant past) 2 differently aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

SURREALISM: You have 2 giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons




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