Guide to Ideologies

'GUIDE TO IDEOLOGIES'


FEUDALISM

You have two cows. Your lord takes some 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 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.

MILITARISM

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 sheep's 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.

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 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 bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM

You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

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 phallo-centric, 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 have some of this milk.

SURREALISM

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