http://www.daclarke.org/Humour/cows.html

A Bovine Guide to Ideologies

Various versions of this document are floating around the Net. This is a pretty good version.
FEUDALISM:
You have two cows. Your lord takes most of the milk. The Church takes most of the rest 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 gives 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 neighbors 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 neighbors decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. Your neighbors 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 press dubs the affair "Cowgate".
BRITISH DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' 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 at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.
CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
AMERICAN FREE ENTERPRISE:
You have two cows. You graze them on public land, paying less than a nickel for the privilege. The government pays you to pour the milk down the drain. You vote for cutbacks in handouts to those lousy Welfare bums.
INTERNATIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows, but after viewing this great infomercial you decide to sell them so you can make the down payment on this year's Super Duper Milk Extraction System. The government bails you out of bankruptcy. You buy two more cows. But you can't sell the milk, because it's contaminated by effluent from the Super Duper fabrication plant just upstream from you. The government bails you out of bankruptcy. Super Duper's PR agency pays you about five times your previous annual income from dairy farming for the use of your farm to film an infomercial. You retire to a nice place far away from the Super Duper plant. Only those who were lucky enough to buy stock in Super Duper can now afford to drink milk.
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 feng shui is bad.
ENVIRONMENTALISM:
You have two cows. The government forbids you to milk or kill them.
FEMINISM:
You have two cows. You notice how peaceful the farm is without a bull around.
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 phallocentric, 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 gotta try some of this milk.
SURREALISM:
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
SPECIESISM:
Your species raises, kills, skins, and eats another species . . . on a large scale. Then you make jokes about it.
de@daclarke.org
webmaster@ucolick.org
De Clarke
UCO/Lick Observatory
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
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