| Anarchy | You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair
price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you. |
| Tribalism | You have two cows. You drain them dry of milk before another
tribe can attack you and take them. |
| Despotism | You have two cows. You enjoy the milk as long as you can
before the boss's soldiers take your cows for a barbecue. |
| Feudalism | You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk to give
to the knights who protect you from the infidels. |
| Monarchy | You have two cows. The King/Queen takes some of the milk to
bribe the aristocracy. |
| Constitutional Monarchy | You have two cows. The Prime Minister takes
some of the milk to bribe the Parliament while the King/Queen goes on holiday. |
| Republic | You have two cows. The Senate takes some of the milk to
give to the mob. |
| Perfect Democracy | You have two cows. You and your neighbors decide who
gets the milk. |
| Real 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. |
| British Democracy | You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' brains and
they go mad. The government doesn't do anything. |
| Libertarianism | You have two cows. You and your neighbors go broke trying
to sell milk to each other but you're too stoned to care. |
| Perfect Capitalism | You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. |
| Real Capitalism | You don't have any cows. The bank will not lend you money
to buy cows because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral. |
| 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. |
| 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. Then 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. |
| Marxism | You have two cows and therefore control the means of production. As
a capitalist you fail to appreciate the dialectic, so concerned government officials take the
cows and put them in a barn where they are milked by cow experts. Someday the experts will
wither away and the cows will milk themselves. |
| Perfect 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 all the milk you need. |
| Bureaucratic Socialism | You have two cows. The government takes them and
puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. Your cows 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. |
| Perfect Communism | You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care
of them, and you all share the milk. |
| Real 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Chinese Communism | You have two cows. The Party takes both, gives one
to the North Koreans and threatens to launch the other at Taiwan, then blames your poverty
on Western meddling. |
| Cambodian Communism | You have two cows. The government takes both and
shoots you. |
| Militarism | You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you. |
| Fascism | You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take
care of them, and sells you the milk. |
| Totalitarianism | You have two cows. The government takes both and denies
they ever existed. Milk is banned. |
| Feminism | You have two cows. They announce their domestic partnership and
adopt a veal calf. |
| Political Correctness | You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a
symbol of the phallocentric, patriarchal, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged
(but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender. |
| Environmentalism | You have two cows. The government bans you from milking
or killing them. Later, they are released from bondage by animal rights activists. The cows
wander onto the highway where they are struck by a paper-thin environment-friendly hybrid car,
nobly sacrificing themselves to remove some of the human cancer contaminating Mother Gaea. |
| Surrealism | You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take
harmonica lessons. |
| Theocracy | You have two cows. The local religious authorities say God loves
you for donating all the milk. |
| Talibanism | Nobody has anything. The government shoots you in the soccer stadium. |