business under different governmental systems

Two Cows

Pure Communism:
You have  two cows. You 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.

Dictatorship:
You have two cows. The government takes  both and
shoots you.

Singaporean Democracy:
You have two  cows. The government fines you for
illegally keeping two unlicensed  farm animals in an
apartment.

Capitalism:
You have two  cows. You sell one and buy a bull, which
you use to breed with the  other cow. Then you create
a great web site and start offering to  export sperm
from the bull to anyone and everyone, especially
emerging  markets, over the Internet.
After a few weeks, your company  completes its IPO on
NASDAQ and a few brokerage firms start coverage with
strong buy rating for this wonderful new Internet
stock. Your  stock zooms from the $0.10
per share initial offering price to $110, when  you
sell. The stock plummets back to $0.10 a few months
after when  the dopes who
bought it realize that your business has no earnings
and  never will, despite the Internet connection.
Several law firms and the SEC  bring various civil and
criminal actions against the company, all of  the
officers and directors and (of course) you under
various fraud  theories. You quickly settle the civil
cases so the lawyers get  paid, but you still have
plenty stashed away. You
plead 'no lo'  in the SEC case and you are sentenced to
10 years in prison, of which you  actually serve seven
weeks. When you come
out, you can't resist  the temptation to buy two
chickens. Then...

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 an associated general offer so that you can get all
four cows back,  with a tax deduction for keeping five
cows. The milk rights of six  cows are then
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 and  proceeds from the
sales are deferred. 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."

True  Democracy:
You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets  the milk.

Representative Democracy:
You have two cows. Your  neighbours vote for 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 on cow  futures. The press
dubs the affair "Cowgate."

British  Democracy:
You have two cows. You feed them sheep ケs brains  and
they go mad.

The government does  nothing.

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.

Feminism:
You have two cows. They get married and adopt  a 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, warmongerish,
intolerant past)two  differently-aged (but no less
valuable to society) bovines of non-specified  gender.

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

(T: I just love this for years.)
eod/