GOVERNMENT 1x1: 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. 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. THEORETICAL 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. PRACTICAL 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 eggs the regulations say you should need. THEORETICAL COMMUNISM ===================== You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk. Everyone has what he needs. SOVIET COMMUNISM ================= You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk, sells it overseas for hard currency, buys military secrets with the money, declares milk to be bourgeois and anti-Soviet, strong Soviet people drink vodka. Then because you have cows, you're found to be a tool of the imperialist West, the cows are confiscated, you're sent to Siberian work camp. The cows find their way to Party apparatchik's mother in Smolensk. CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM =================== You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you. DICTATORSHIP ============ You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you, starts a war because an aggressor neighbor is attempting to take milk from the mouths of your children. TOTALITARIANISM =============== You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. THEORETICAL DEMOCRACY ===================== You have two cows. You and your neighbors decide who gets the milk. Everyone has what he needs. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY ======================== You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk. His friends and those who contribute to his campaign have what they need. BUREAUCRATIC DEMOCRACY ====================== You have two cows. Your neighbors elect a career politician to decide what you do with the milk. Your cows produce so much milk that the government pays you not to milk them. Then it hires additional personnel to oversee the not-milking of them, and makes frequent trips to your farm to verify that you have not milked them. The government employees create an intricate system of forms-in-triplicate to account for and track your not-milking. Then a budget cut arises, personnel cuts ensue, so the government takes both your cows, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out the triplicate forms accounting for the missing cows. 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. SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY ===================== You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. PURE CAPITALISM =============== You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. You breed cattle for milk and sale. BUREAUCRATIC CAPITALISM ======================= You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and begin to breed cattle. You birth 4 calves. The government taxes each new calf at its anticipated high market value, charges registration fees, license fees, land use fees, increased property tax on the higher-value of your land now that it has a greater potential for producing income, and quarterly estimated income tax based on the high estimated market value of your cattle. You're going to have to sell three of the calves to pay the taxes. Because all other cattle producers are in the same boat, the market tanks, and you sell at low market, attempting to write off your losses on your income tax. The government audits your books, declares you underreported your income and overstated your deductions, and confiscates your remaining cow, calf and bull in lieu of back taxes, interest and penalties. You have no income to pay the mortgage on your farm, the bank repossesses it. You move to the city to get a job, wind up applying for welfare, which the government is more than happy to give you. You take up selling drugs to make a buck, get busted and sent to prison, where you spend your next years watching encouraging government-made films on "how to start your own business" and "how to be your own boss." POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ===================== You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallocentric, warmongering, 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. COUNTER CULTURE =============== Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk. SURREALISM ========== You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.