Here's a short course on everything you will ever need to know about
economics (and government).
- Feudalism - You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
- 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 them both, denies they ever existed, and drafts you into
the army. Milk is banned.
- Dictatorship: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
- 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.
- Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
- Applied Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
- 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.
- Singaporean Democracy: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals
in an apartment.
- 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.
- 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 right 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 of bad feng shui.
- Feminism: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.
