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As there is sometimes an ideological mix-up going
on, on the list, I thought you might be amused by this post from the TOES
list:
Those economic scenarios you sent were probably written by somewhat callous
Royalist Libertarians who think that non-regulated capitalism is the best
system. So I have written the following, comparing the RL to the
Geo-Libertarian, and modified the one on CAPITALISM, AMERICAN
STYLE.
Royalist Libertarian
You have two cows and several
acres of land.
Your neighbor is a single mom, has no cows, no land and works
a minimum wage job.
You tell your neighbor that if she works longer and
harder she could buy one of your cows and become an enterprising
capitalist.
Your neighbor takes on the night shift in addition to her day
job, leaving for work after the kids are in bed and arriving home just in time
to get them dressed for school. After a year she has saved enough money to buy
one of your cows. Realizing that she needs some land for the cow she asks if you
will lease her some of your land which you are happy to do at the highest
possible land rent.
She pulls back to a regular 40 plus hours a week of work
in order to take care of the cow and market its milk, soon realizing that she
has to feed the cow steroids to produce more milk to pay the land rent to
you.
Your neighbor tries hard to become a successful cow milk merchant, but
in just a few months the cow dies of exhaustion and soon thereafter she dies of
a stress related illness, leaving her children to fend for themselves in the
streets because libertarians have dismantled all social services including those
for orphans.
Meanwhile you have been earning dividends from the stocks you
bought with the cash your neighbor paid for your cow plus the land rent she had
been paying to you on a monthly basis. The milk from your cow is supplemental
income.
You buy four more cows, dupe another poor neighbor and quadruple your
wealth in one year,
Geo Libertarian
You have two cows and several acres
of land.
Your neighbor is a single mom, has no cows, no land and works a
minimum wage job.
You understand that there is a deep structural injustice in
the economic system, you know what to do about it, so you become an
activist.
You share your economic justice knowledge with your neighbor and
then get to work changing the tax laws so that (1) your neighbor can keep all of
her hard-earned income and (2) those who have enclosed substantial
amounts of land for their own private domain now pay a fair land rent to
society.
Your tax bill arrives and you realize you have been holding more
land than you really need, so you put some of your land up for sale which your
neighbor buys with the additional income she has because of genuine tax
relief.
Your neighbor, whose "can-do" attitude is now fully operative having
acquired a secure place to stand on her own land, soon builds her own home from
the timber from the fast-growing species of trees she planted. She then develops
her talents as a visual artist painting pictures of cows, much more to her
liking than having to milk them.
You realize that you have found true
happiness and inner peace by helping to build a world that works for
everyone.
LIBERAL
You have
two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being
successful.
Instead of giving your neighbor one of your cows, you
write to your congressman, demanding that he pass legislation for more
government programs to help your neighbor get a cow. You hold a concert to
raise awareness for the cow-lessness. Barbara Streisand sings for the
cow-less, who couldn't attend because ticket prices are so expensive that
only people with 3 or 4 cows can afford to attend. You wear a ribbon that
signifies that you care about cowless people, even though you really haven't
done anything to help them at all.
CONSERVATIVE
You have
two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your
neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes
both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE (The
obscuring myth)
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and
build a herd of cows.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE (The real story)
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull,
and build a herd of cows. You put your cows on your previously
acquired piece of choice real estate and take a tax write-off for
agricultural land. You sell some of your land (the rest you keep for
speculation) to middle class working people who are now mortgaged for life
and you put your profits into offshore accounts, further avoiding taxes. You
lobby for a bigger military budget and a national policy of full spectrum
dominance so that you and other bullish elites can grab other peoples land
all over the planet.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to
sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which
was a gift from your government.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks
the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours t he milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one,
lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two
cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops
dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have down sized
and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.
FRENCH
CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want
three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign
them so they are one tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty
times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most
are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN
CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all
blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred
miles an hour. Unfortunat ely they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per
year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't
know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.
RUSSIAN
CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count
them and learn you have four cows.
You have some more vodka.
You
count them again and learn you have eight cows.
The Mafia shows up and
takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN
CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You
don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. Then
you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the
hospital.
IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They
go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are
regularly m aimed and killed attempting to milk them.
CALIFORNIAN
(
This is the Goodwin Special....RWN)
You have a cow and a bull.
The
bull is depressed.
It has spent its life living a lie.
It goes away
for two weeks.
It comes back after a taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
You now have two cows.
One makes milk; the other doesn't.
You
try to sell the transgender cow.
Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
You lose in court.
You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the
damages.
You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing cow.
You change your business to beef.
PETA pickets your farm.
Jesse
Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
Cruz Bustamante calls for
higher farm taxes to help "working cows".
Hillary Clinton calls for the
nationalization of 1/7 o f your farm "for the children".
Gray Davis
signs a law giving your farm to Mexico.
The L.A. Times quotes five
anonymous cows claiming you groped their teats.
You declare bankruptcy
and shut down all operations.
The cow starves to death.
The L.A. Times' analysis shows your business failure is
Bush's fault.
bb
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