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Political Economy is the foundation for applied politics.
Political propaganda can make political economy hard for the average person to understand.
Most libertarians believe that the best way to understand economic principles is to reduce them to the simplest sort of transactions that involve two actors.
They can be two individuals, or one individual and the state.
In this case YOU
are the individual, and we start from the premise that
YOU
HAVE TWO COWS.
Now, what can you do with those cows, or what happens to you and your two cows, under
different political and economic ways of ordering society?
Feudalism: You have two cows. Your
feudal lord takes some of the milk, and on her Wedding Night takes the milkmaid as well.
Idealized
Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with
every one else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as
much milk as you need.
Applied
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 as the regulations say you should need.
National
Socialism (Fascism): You have two cows. The government tells you how much milk to produce and who
you can sell it to, for the good of the Fatherland. The Jewish milkmaid disappears.
Idealized
Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all
share the milk.
Leninist
Communism: You have two cows. Actually, the state owns them, but you have to take care of
them. Most of the milk goes to the Revolutionary Vanguard.
Stalinist
Communism: You have two cows. The state kills them and you. Your children and neighbors
starve to death waiting for the state to replace the two cows. The state denies you ever
existed.
Brezhnev
Communism: You have two cows. You bribe the local Party Boss to let you sell some of the
milk on the black market. With the profits you buy Beatles albums and used Levi jeans.
Gorbachev
Communism: You have two cows. The local party boss asks you if you want to donate some of
the milk to the Party. You kick him off your land, sell all your milk on the black market,
and use the profits to convert your barn into a disco. You become rich.
Yeltsin
Russian Capitalism: You have two cows. The former Communist Party Boss is now a Russian
Mafia Don. You have to give him half the profits from the disco you built from selling the
milk from the two cows. Your children shoot heroin.
Modern
Chinese Communism: You have two cows. You bribe the party boss, sell the milk on an open market,
buy a nightclub, deal drugs, and live well so long as you never speak your mind.
Pure
Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors vote on who gets the milk.
Representative
Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
American
Democracy: The two political parties promise you two cows if you will vote for them.
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.
Singaporean
Democracy: You have two cows. The government whips you with a bamboo cane for spilling
milk on the road.
African
Democracy: You have two cows. A rival tribe takes them, burns your ranch, and hacks you
to pieces.
Welfare
State Democracy: 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
cows, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down a drain. Then it makes you fill
out forms accounting for the missing cows.
Militarism: You have two cows. The
state requisitions both and then drafts you.
Free
Market Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Enron
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 get all four cows back. You
take a tax deduction for five cows. The milk rights for six cows are transferred to a
Cayman Islands company secretly owned by a 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 in order to
report lower overhead and project higher profits. Your stock soars-for a while.
Crony
Capitalism: You have two cows. You leverage a hefty campaign contribution to a seat on the
State Dairy Board. There you pass a regulation guaranteeing that no one can sell milk in
the state cheaper than you. Your son becomes the most influential lobbyist in the State.
Environmentalism:
You
have two cows. The government declares them an endangered species and bans you from
milking them or killing them for meat.
Feminism: You have two cows. The get
married and adopt a veal calf.
Counterculture: Well, dude, there's
like…these two cows, man. You got to try some of this milk.
Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The
government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
Popular
Conception of Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair
price or your neighbors will kill you and take the cows.
Anarcho-Capitalism: You have two cows. You
insure them against theft. You sell the milk on a free market. Any disputes with your
neighbor are handled by a mutually agreed upon arbitrator.
Libertarianism: You have two cows. One has
actually read the Constitution, believes in it, and has some really good ideas about
government. The cow runs for office, and while most people agree the cow is the best
candidate, nobody except the other cow votes for her. Election polls show voters
"Didn't want to waste their vote".