Two cows to describe governments
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 one and buy a bull, which you use to breed,
to 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.
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.