Global Economies and Theories Demystified

While cleaning out my hard drive of useless crap that have accumulated over the years, I stumbled upon this document =). It's strictly for comedic purposes (though they do have a grain or two of truth). Basically, all political, economic, governmental, you-name-it theories can be simplified and explained with 2+/- cows. =)

Government/Theory Policies:

ALTRUISM: You have two cows. You give one to your neighbor. You send the other cow to Somalia.

ANARCHISM: You have two cows. Your neighbor has one cow, and asks you to share your spare cow's milk with them. You voluntarily agree, and with the enthusiastic help of your scientist neighbor you make the cow self-replicate. Now your neighbor also has two cows, and everyone cheers each other on for doing so well without a government.

ANARCHISM 2: You have two cows. A roving gang from the Mad Max movies comes along and steals them and rapes you. You are powerless to fight them alone so you and your friends band together and form your own gang to stop them and steal back the two cows. The leader of your gang orders the rape and murder of the other gang whether or not that was originally what you had in mind. Your gang steals more cows than any other gang and becomes a Fascism or Feudalism. The Anarchy you had been living in only lasted about a week.

ANARCHISM 3: You have two cows. You arm one with bombs and send it up the elevator of a bank building, and let the other loose on the freeway.

ANARCHIC-INDIVIDUALISM: You have two cows. The cows decide you have no right to do anything with their milk and leave to form their own society.

ANARCHIC-COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

ANARCHIC-SYNDICALISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors riot and kill you for trying to sell the milk.

ANARCHIC-SYNDICALISM 2: You have two cows. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major—

ANIMALISM: Your neighbor's a cow.

NIHILISM: You have no cows. Who really cares, anyway? They're just gonna die some day, and so are you. And nobody's going to remember you. And even if they did, you'd still be dead. It's all so pointless. You might as well be dead now.

AUTOCRACY: You had two cows, but traded them in for a new Honda Accord.

ARISTOCRACY: You have two cows. You sell both and buy one really big cow - with a pedigree.

ABSOLUTE MONARCHY: The king has two cows. He and his cows live off the fat of the land while the poor peasants in the land starve. Then the peasants revolt. In the end he gets hanged, and so do the cows.

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows and you give one to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

COMMUNISM – BUREAUCRATIC: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

REAL WORLD COMMUNISM: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most "ability" and who has the most "need". Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.

MARXISM: You have two herds of cows. The proletarian cows unite and overthrow the bourgeoisie cowherds. The egalitarian democratic cow revolutionary state with the cow party as vanguard disintegrates over time. Marx choked on a veggie-burger before he could explain what happens to the use-value, exchange-value and sign-value of bovine leather.

CAPITALISM: You have no cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral. Go and sell your cows nightmares for a third of their original cost.

CAPITALISM 2: You have two cows. Your landlord wants his rent, so you sell one cow to pay him. Your other cow dies when you try to milk it 8 times a day to have enough for your starving family. The next month the landlord again wants his rent, and you, in debt, with no cows, are forced to work in a dehumanizing factory for slave wages while your debt becomes greater through interest rates.

CAPITALISM 3: You have 1000 cows. You hire indebted people at slave wages to milk them and manage to wrestle the competition, gaining a monopoly. You get richer and richer doing absolutely nothing except swim around in Caipirinhas in a Caribbean resort, while your workers cannot afford to buy the milk with their wages.

CAPITALISM 4: You have 100,000,000 cows and you are absolutely drowning in so much more milk than anybody can afford or drink, as one half of them are unemployed and the other half is working in your milk mines. You lobby the government into starting a war, giving the unemployed half an income that they must use on milk that the government gets from you. You attach laser sights to your cow's horns and sell them for ludicrous prices to the government to be used as laser guided bombs. The government prints money to pay you, inflation is the result.

PURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

BANKRUPT CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. You paid too much for the bull, you sold the fertile cow, the other cow is sterile, and the bull likes other bulls. You trade your other cow for another bull.

CAPITALISM – INTERVENTIONIST: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull; you then sell all the excess milk to the government who in turn ships it to fascist and communist governments.

CAPITALISM – INDUSTRIAL: You have two cows. You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows and then act surprised when it drops dead.

FASCISM: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

FASCISM 2: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

FASCISM 3: You have two cows. The government takes one away and presses it into military service.

FASCISM 4: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage. You blow up the cow depository. Now no one has any cows, except the leaders, who have thousands. Your children starve.

FASCISM – CORPORATE: You have two cows. The State takes both; their cronies form a corporation, hire you to take care of the cows and sell you the milk.

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The Government takes both and shoots you.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

TOTALITARIANISM 2: You have two cows. You're shot and the cows are tortured until they love Big Brother. Also, everyone speaks in a weird abbreviated language. Your cows don't even go "moo". They just sorta go "m".

BUREAUCRACY: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away...

BUREAUCRACY 2: 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. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other dry and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

BUREAUCRACY 3: You have two cows, and are required to proclaim ownership of purchase to the IRS, the FDA, the IRC (International Requests Channels), the AAA (the old one), the AGB (the Association of Good Business), and the FHA (Form Handling Agency). The IRS has two forms that must be completed and signed under a notary within 24 hours, but no one can work on Sunday under the DBLA. To handle this, the IRS has provided a secondary form that can be attached to the AAA form that can be provided within 48 hours that will be processed via the IRS to the IRC if the IRC form is completed first. In order to request the IRC form a form must be processed to the FHA within 72 hours which will be returned within 24 hours but it's really more like two weeks. If you have enough money to bribe the forms through, then official forms must be handled to the IRC and FHA in the same procedure as for the IRS. If a dual IRS-AAA form is processed, a separate AAA form must be handled within 61.8 hours with a surcharge of $47.56 but only through the IRC with permission from the FHA, permission from the FHA can be provided proof that forms for the FDA have been properly secured. The money paid on the surcharge is tax-deductible provided that a form is processed to the IRS via the IRC with knowledge of service from the FHA within 24 hours, knowledge of service from the FHA can only be provided if proof of forms for the completion of forms for the AAA is handled. Proof for forms can be requested from the FHA with a $50 surcharge on one form, $55 on proof for two forms, $60 for three forms, etc.. Forms for the FDA (which must be filed within a month) can only be secured if the purchase meets guidelines from the AGB verifiable through forms collected via the AAA, the verification forms from the AAA can be received through the FHA again via the IRC if a request is placed within two weeks, if the verification form is processed, reviewed, and deemed satisfactory by the AGB, a satisfactory completion form will be mailed within one month to be handled by the FHA via the IRC to the FDA to allow forms for the AAA and thus IRS to be processed. Any breaches of protocol with cause the purchaser to be fined $100. Of course, the easier and cheaper way (considering it's impossible to make the paperwork through on time, the hours don't add up) is to bribe an official at the IRS, IRC, FHA, AAA, AGB, and FDA $100 each and they'll take care of the rest.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them from you. Your cows now 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 eggs the regulations say you should need.

THEOCRACY: You have two cows. You may only milk them every third Sunday, or be stoned to death by the other cow owners. You must brush them from left to right, or be stoned. If you do not milk the cows, you are also stoned to death. Failure to participate in stoning is grounds for stoning. Your cows are sacrificed. You are stoned for not owning any cows.

THIRD WORLD GLOBALIZED "DEMOCRACY": Ten years ago, your village had two cows. One cow died from dehydration after Bechtel built a hydroelectric dam upstream. The other was sold to pay your debt to the World Bank for building the dam. After you threw stones at the dam employees in protest, a death squad shot you and your family as communists.

QUANTUM MECHANICS: You have two cows. But when you check, there's only one!

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 of the cows. The government gives you all the milk they think you need. The excess is poured down the drain.

PURE SOCIALISM 2: You had two cows. They were both put on a giant farm with everybody else's cows. You are continually working more and receiving less milk because of freeloader workers taking advantage of the system. You yourself become a freeloader.

SOCIAL LIBERALISM: You have two cows, you're part of the "lucky 1% who won life's lottery" and as soon as we get some "real Democrats" elected, you'll have to share your cows. Any day now.....hang on.....next election for sure!....okay, the NEXT one, really for sure!

DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

DEMOCRACY 2: You have two cows. An election is held and the cows win.

DEMOCRACY 3: You have two cows. They outvote you 2-1 to ban all meat and dairy products. You go bankrupt and starve.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

INGSOC: You have two cows. The government takes them, erases all records that the cows ever existed, and gives you artificial milk and artificial meat instead.

INGSOC 2: You have two cows. Your neighbor has two cows. Together, you have five cows.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

DEMOCRACY – PARLIAMENT: You have two cows. Politicians decide who gets the milk.

CONSERVATISM: You have two cows. You lock them up, and charge people to look at them.

ECONOMICS: Assume you have two cows.

ECONOMICS – FREE TRADE: Foreign countries want to export two cows to your country. You are the US and don't want this, so you enact a tariff and cause the world's entire market system to grind to a halt, and no one has two cows because they've all been eaten.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them. It might destroy the habitat of some rare animal you will never see.

FATALISM: You have two cows. You die. You don't know if they die because you're already dead.

GANDHI-ISM: You have two cows. Someone takes a cow; you take someone else's, "a cow for a cow makes the whole world moo."

GANDHI-ISM 2: "First they ignore your two cows, then they laugh at your two cows, then they fight your two cows, then your two cows win."

GANDHI-ISM 3: You have two cows. They form a national counsel and demand autonomy. They declare peaceful protest and the right to milk themselves. A public movement to milk themselves embarrasses the British government. Nazis overrun Europe. They declare that Nazis aren't any worse than the British. The Nazis mark your cows down for future extermination.

GOVERNMENT COVER-UP: Cows never crash-landed in the New Mexico desert. In fact, cows never even existed. You never saw anything.

LIBERTARIANISM: You have two cows. You exchange one for gold and rent out the other for more gold. You sit alone in your house with lots and lots of gold, slowly starving and suffering from malnutrition due to lack of dairy products.

LIBERTARIAN-SOCIALISM: You have two cows. Someone steals one. You give the police a bucket of milk to find the guy and get your cow back. The cop keeps your cow after arresting the guy.

LIBERTARIAN-SYNDICALISM: You own 47.8% of your cows, the Farmer's Union owns 15.4%, the person that owns the barn owns 28.5%, and shares of the remaining 8.3% are traded on the open market.

MILITARISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

NEO-LIBERALISM: You make a deal where your child corporation buys two cows from the government for 50 cents each. Over several years you let all the profit go to your Swiss bank account, and neglect the cows. Your child corporation files for bankruptcy, the government finds out about the state of the cows and buys them back for $3 million each.

OBJECTIVISM: It is your rational self-interest to possess as many cows as you can, and trade freely the goods they produce without any form of coercion applied unto you or other members of the society. Should an altruist, mystic government dare to control your cows, shrug and go on strike.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the war mongering, intolerant past) two differently aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

PURE COMMUNISM: You don't have cows. Your commune has two cows, and everyone shares them. You go home after work every day, content that you live in a classless society.

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

SURREALISM 2: You have two aardvarks. The government paints one green and requires you to take harmonica lessons.

SURREALISM 3: You have two melting clocks. Your over-sized comb screams.

SURREALISM 4: You had two platypus. The government took them away because your harmonica lessons made your over-sized comb scream. Then you found a penny and became rich.

Corporation and Organization Policies:

ENRON VENTURE 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. He then executes a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by your CFO who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on six more. The public buys your bull. Now all this makes it look like you have 17 cows, but you really owe some guy five cows.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

A KENYAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You eat both.

A WISCONSIN CORPORATION: You have two cows. That one on the right is kinda cute...

GATEWAY: This ain't no bull! You use them in your advertising campaigns.

AIR AMERICA: You have two cows. Six months later, you drop a cow and replace it with Jerry Springer. Your other cow steals money from a kids' charity. Finally, after 3 years, he quits and runs for US Senate from Minnesota.

AIR CANADA: You have two cows. You pour government funding into your cows. Somehow, you end up with no cows.

CAPITALISM – WALL STREET: You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the second one. You force the 2 cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts that you have reduced your expenses. Your stock goes up.

CAPITALISM – WALL STREET 2: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows to increase your share price on the stock market. You get Anderson to audit your business. You lose your business and you lose your cows.

FEMA: You have two cows. You name one Katrina and the other Rita. You spend your time in the field blissfully looking the other way, mindlessly daydreaming while they wipe the entire state of Louisiana as well as much of Mississippi and their inhabitants forever off the map.

Policies of Countries Around the World - Past and Present:

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY 2: You have two cows. One of your cows has a small foot infection. The government orders you to burn both cows. All the cows in the surrounding area are also burned, roads and footpaths are closed and the media throws the country into a panic. You decide to protest about not being allowed to hunt foxes.

BILL CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: You have two cows. The President's wife tries to take one, she fails and Democrats lose Congress. You then get to keep your cows, sell the milk, keep the profits, and "triangulate" yourself to appear as if you are sharing with others. The people with no cows get mad, but you get fellated by one of the cows, the Republicans try to impeach you, and the people with no cows get mad at them!

COMMUNISM – CAMBODIAN: You have two cows. The government sends a teenager in a red bandanna to shoot them… then he shoots you.

COMMUNISM – MODERN CHINESE: You have no cows. The government sets up a joint venture with McDonald's.

COMMUNISM – CHINESE: You have two cows. You take care of them. The government takes all the milk, but you are encouraged to steal some of it back (before someone else does).

COMMUNISM – CHINESE 2: You have two cows. You employ small children to milk them under dangerous working conditions for little pay. The milk is sold at Wal-Mart for rock-bottom prices.

COMMUNISM – CHINESE (MAO) : You have two pigs. The government launches a campaign to convince you to donate them "voluntarily" to provide meat for workers in the city. The government then declares that people don't need pigs to make pork. Quoting the correct phrases from your little red book, you and your neighbors try to create pork from sheer willpower. Your local party leader reports that you have exceeded all expectations. Your neighbors starve.

COMMUNISM – CHINESE (MAO) 2: You have two bulls. Several people are killed while attempting to milk them.

COMMUNISM – CASTRO: Fidel Castro has two cows. They are F1's, a cross between the Cebu cow and the Holstein cow. Only one cow, "White Udder," works. When she dies she is stuffed and placed in a museum by Castro, "The Dictator of the Cows," where "future generations could admire her magnificent udders." You have not seen cow milk since 1985.

COMMUNISM – CUBAN: You have two cows. Fidel tells you some undercover CIA agents have infected all of the cows in your region with a foreign disease that kills the cows. You and your family become malnourished. It begins to occur to you that Fidel doesn't know what he is talking about.

COMMUNISM - VIETNAM: You have two cows. The government takes the cows, kills them, then tries to sell it to the United States. The United States then places a high tariff on the beef saying the Vietnamese beef does not meet the required FDA standard regulations and that the beef really isn't beef because the cows that the beef came from were not really cows.

COMMUNISM – USSR: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. Then the government sends you to prison.

COMMUNISM – USSR 2: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

COMMUNISM – LENIN: You have two cows. You are shot as a counter-revolutionary. The cows are also shot as counter- revolutionary. The Proletariat gets the milk, but refuses to drink such petit bourgeois liquids.

COMMUNISM – STALIN: Your cows never existed.

COMMUNISM – STALIN 2: You have two cows. You are shot as a counter-revolutionary. The cows are put in the Gulag. The milk? What milk? Who are you, and why are you asking about milk, Comrade?

COMMUNISM – STALIN 3: You must be mistaken. The two cows you speak of never existed. I hope we have cleared up this misunderstanding. I suggest you never mention it again.

STALINISM: You have two cows in one country. You make a five year plan. You achieve your goals in three years. Ten million cows died.

LENINISM: You have one cow and one day you will have two, but only if you give the first one to the party.

COMMUNISM – SOVIET RUSSIA: In Soviet Russia, two cows have YOU!!!

CAPITALISM – BRAZIL: You have two cows. You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.

CAPITALISM – NETHERLANDS: You have two cows. You create a separate holding (of which you make yourself CEO), sell the cows to it then lease them back. Legal fees paid for the forming of the holding are tax-deductible. Oh, and in the first three years, your holding has extra tax benefits for being a small start-up company. Oh, and at the other end, you are allowed deduct the cow-leasing fee before taxes. So far, so good; with the money you got from selling the cows you decide to buy three pigs, with an additional option for seven more (at a fixed low price). And while you're at it, you get some options on three more cows (to be bought for a price based on a gliding scale, but still very attractive all in all). You sell your milk quota for all five cows at the stock exchange when prices are high, then buy back two cows worth from your neighbor when he is desperate enough to sell. You even do him a favor and sell him the options to the three extra cows at a friendly price. Or so he thinks. You now have two cows (with milk quota) and three pigs, plus a surplus amount of cash. You decide to cash in on two of the pigs options that you still own. Then, you sell three of your pigs to your cow-lease firm and then lease them back. The remaining five pig options are thrown into the deal. Since you have reduced the number of pigs that you might have owned from ten to five, the government (backed up by the European Union) compensates you for the loss of income that you have suffered for not actually having owned the five optional pigs. Queen Beatrix comes along and commends you for being such an outstanding entrepreneur. Everybody is happy as a clam. Then unexpectedly one cow dies from the bird flu (H5N1). You demand a replacement cow from the cow-leasing firm. This, in turn, leads to litigation between the lease company and the insurance company (you DID take out insurance, didn't you?) After a while, the cow-leasing firm goes bankrupt. Since you now are unemployed (no longer being CEO of the cow-leasing firm) you apply for welfare. At 70% of the average earnings made over the last three months, this is a handsome income indeed. You decide to employ a caretaker for you business and retire. When you ask around at the Rotary what experiences the other members have hiring labor you learn that there is this new and exciting government program meant to deal with long-term unemployment...

CAPITALISM – HONG KONG: 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.

CAPITALISM – SWEDEN: You have two cows. You bought them from IKEA and assembled them yourself (it was cheaper). The Volvo cows last a lot longer but don't look as trendy.

CAPITALISM – DENMARK: You have two cows, but some other cows start coming from other countries and wants to live with you. If you don't accept they'll stay and start raping your cows and elect a racist government... Meanwhile you are powerless and start to blame Sweden. Norway hates you for taking over Norway over hundreds of years ago so they don't enter the E.U. Meanwhile again Sweden refuses to listen to you.

CAPITALISM – JAPANESE: You have two cows. They are commissioned to write new games for the new gaming systems. Five years later the Chinese cows take over the gaming market with counterfeit copies of the games you make. You lose your job and your meat is mixed up with the beef from the United States that is infected with Mad Cow Disease. Your meat is dumped into the sea and the fish eat it. Then this causes a huge epidemic of Mad Fish Disease. The entire seafood industry in Japan collapses and everybody starves to death.

CAPITALISM – NORTH KOREA: You have two cows after the North Korean government conducted an attempt to introduce a lesser form of capitalism around the cities that are near to the Chinese border. Your very tiny business fails miserably when you tried to sell the milk to the Chinese. And you feel hopeless. Then you plan to seek refugee to South Korea in the price of selling your two cows.

CAPITALISM – SOUTH KOREA: You have two cows. You follow exactly what the Japanese did to their cows with a Korean twist.

CAPITALISM – USA: You have two cows. You prosper from their milk. You downsize the cows and get five Chinese cows that produce milk cheaply and work in horrific conditions. Your old cows are living on welfare and are scorned by other cows because they were too lazy to produce milk.

CAPITALISM – USA 2: You have two cows. You give one to a lobbyist who talks to a congressman. The congressman gives you tax breaks. With the extra money you buy ten more cows. You give seven cows to the lobbyist, who encourages the government to pay you thirty cows so you can build a milk pipeline in Saudi Arabia so American citizens can have more milk, while depriving Saudi Arabian chickens of their freedom. You get fifty more cows because of it. You use forty cows to build a beef factory in China. In Saudi Arabia anti-cow sentiment is brewing because cows support the government. You ignore it. Several relatives of decapitated rebel-chickens crash planes into two very tall barns. You blame their religion and go to war with a nation which is home to the leader of the chickens. You give up because there are no hamburger stands there, go to war with a totally unrelated nation and start torturing ducks.

DEMOCRACY – PHILIPPINES: You have two cows. The people are hungry. An election is held, and the cows win because their milk fed the people. The people go hungry again and take to the streets in People Power and demand the cows to be slaughtered. They are made into hamburgers. A few days later, the people are hungry again.

DEMOCRACY – AMERICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk and then blame Japan while border guards beat up Mexicans sneaking into the country. People are outraged for a week or so and then go back to televised sports "where there's no violence".

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: You introduce a "two cows in every barn" bill in the House of Representatives. A Texas congressman moves that a rider be attached giving the state's oil industry $1 billion. The motion carries. A Florida congressman moves that a rider be attached mandating the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. The motion carries. Finally, the House votes on your amended "two cows" bill and narrowly approves it. Your bill goes to the Senate. A senator launches a filibuster by reading aloud the serial number of every cow in the country. Everyone falls asleep. During the fourth day of the filibuster, another senator points out that this "two cows" nonsense is distracting everyone from the number one issue in the country--banning gay marriage--and introduces a constitutional amendment to that effect. Then Congress recesses for the season and your bill dies.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC – USA: You have two cows. The government exercises those powers delegated to it by the people, who are sovereign. The majority does not rule because the people and their representatives (elected, appointed and employed) are constrained by various checks and balances, including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the three co-equal branches of government, and the 50 state republics (see, e.g., Article IV, section 4). So what the government does with your cows and with the milk from those cows depends on the interaction between the people and the checks and balances mentioned above.

DEMOCRACY – NIXON: 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."

DEMOCRACY – FLORIDA: You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best-looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.

DEMOCRACY – AUSTRALIAN: You have two cows. The government nationalizes your herd to control the price of milk and level the playing field for consumers. Each cow has a calf and they grow into cows. The milkers union stage an industrial action (strike) to protest the increase in the number of milk cows. A new party comes to power and the economic rationalists privatize your herd to control the price of milk and level the playing field for producers. The government orders the slaughter of two cows to cut production and control the price of milk. You throw a huge beef barbie (barbecue), with XXXX (how Australians spell beer), invite the milkers union, and give a speech espousing the merits of a level playing field. Everyone is stuffed to the gills with beef, milk, and beer, and nods gravely during your speech. You still have two cows.

DEMOCRACY – SINGAPOREAN: You have two cows. You have to pay the government $10,000 for a certificate of cow ownership. The government charges you for parking them and fines you for not cleaning up afterwards. 5% of the milk goes to the government as GST. The rest goes to charity because the government says so. NKF uses the milk to trick people into believing they are sabers of colored milk and uses the money to buy gold plated taps and first class flights. You go broke and make the cows into hamburgers. The government then charges you for genocide.

INDIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government passes a law forbidding you to kill them. The minority religious constituencies fight for your right to kill the cows if you choose to do so. Your cows are featured in a Yash Chopra movie dramatization of the dispute, become film stars, and are elected to parliament.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC – AFGHANISTAN: You have two cows. Mollas take both. Then they make you believe that you are a cow! Now you should produce milk, otherwise you'll die.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC – IRAN: You have two cows. The government takes them and makes you realize that you never had cows and you must go and moo every Friday noon to get milk.

ITALIAN REPUBLIC: You have two cows. You use them to make a seven course meal. You are full.

JAPAN – WWII ERA: You have two cows. They sacrifice themselves to the emperor's cause of fighting in Manchuria. Afterwards other countries go crazy whenever you visit a farm or burger joint.

LEBANON: You have two cows. They are owned by Syria. You drive them out in a revolution but one cow is held hostage by Hezbollah and the other is assassinated by its political enemies. You are then killed in an Israeli air strike.

NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT: You have two cows. You are blamed for the starvation in Africa because of your greed.

NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT 2: You have two cows. They scam people by e-mail.

PERESTROIKA: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the "free" market.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

RUSSIAN CAPITALISM: You have no cows, but Roman Abromhovich has 7,000,000,000 cows which he bought off the government for two cups of milk in a closed auction.

RUSSIAN CAPITALISM 2: You had two cows but you didn't know what they were or how to milk them so you sold them to Mikhail Kodorovsky for a cup of milk.

Party Policies:

DEMOCRATIC POLICY: You have two cows. Your neighbor has no cows. You have to sell a cow to pay the egregiously high taxes to get your neighbor a cow, but when your neighbor gets the cow, he too has to sell his cow to pay for giving you your second cow.

DEMOCRATIC POLICY2: You have two cows. Both cows are taken away from you and given to undeserving black people.

REPUBLICAN POLICY: You have two cows. Your neighbor has three cows, and you can't have fewer cows than your neighbor, so you get the government to lower your taxes so that you can afford the additional cow. However, your neighbor now has lower taxes too, so he gets a fourthhuge cow. You keep getting the government to lower taxes until you and your neighbor both have a herd of cows. Meanwhile, the government goes bankrupt, hyperinflation occurs, and all of your cows become utterly worthless.

REPUBLICAN TAX CUT POLICY: You have 2 cows. One of the cows convinces you that if you stop milking her, you'll end up with 3 times the milk. When it fails, she blames congress for not cutting milk consumption.

CAPITALISM – DEMOCRATIC: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a hamster and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

CAPITALISM – REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. You give one cow to a lobbyist who gives the cow to a Congressman in exchange for lowering the cow tax. Now you have one cow and a Congressman. You try to tell them apart.

CAPITALISM – REPUBLICAN 2: The poor should donate cows to the rich so that the cows will trickle back down to the poor.

Today's Random Picture: