I’m sure most visitors have heard of the “two cows” jokes – they seem to be the most popular ‘definitional jokes’ about politics (much like the religion shit list, and the lightbulb joke). I thought it’d be fun to define “Thaksinomics”, our current eco-political system under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, under the two-cow framework. Here’s what I came up with:
THAKSINOMICS: You have two cows. The government sets up an offshore, tax-free Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which convinces you to swap your cows for stock options under the “asset-to-equity swap” scheme. The government tells you the cows die from a disease contracted while in your possession, and fines you for negligence. Meanwhile, the government dissolves the SPV, secretly transfers the cows to one of Thaksin’s many nominee companies, which it then lists on the stock exchange as ThaiCows PCL. Four years later, with no cows, worthless stock options, and no money to repay loans you took out to pay the fines, you gingerly accept 500 Baht bribe to vote Thaksin’s party back in power – not because you like the guy, but because by that time that’s the only choice on the ballot and you don’t want to be accused of being unpatriotic.
Feel free to post your own version(s) or comment on mine 😉 I know it’s a bit long, but I’m not sure how it could be made shorter while preserving all the juicy aspects of Thaksinomics. I already added it to the two cows jokebook in Wikibooks. And for anyone who’s interested, here are some of my favorite “two cows” jokes:
I’m sure most visitors have heard of the “two cows” jokes – they seem to be the most popular ‘definitional jokes’ about politics (much like the religion shit list, and the lightbulb joke). I thought it’d be fun to define “Thaksinomics”, our current eco-political system under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, under the two-cow framework. Here’s what I came up with:
THAKSINOMICS: You have two cows. The government sets up an offshore, tax-free Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which convinces you to swap your cows for stock options under the “asset-to-equity swap” scheme. The government tells you the cows die from a disease contracted while in your possession, and fines you for negligence. Meanwhile, the government dissolves the SPV, secretly transfers the cows to one of Thaksin’s many nominee companies, which it then lists on the stock exchange as ThaiCows PCL. Four years later, with no cows, worthless stock options, and no money to repay loans you took out to pay the fines, you gingerly accept 500 Baht bribe to vote Thaksin’s party back in power – not because you like the guy, but because by that time that’s the only choice on the ballot and you don’t want to be accused of being unpatriotic.
Feel free to post your own version(s) or comment on mine 😉 I know it’s a bit long, but I’m not sure how it could be made shorter while preserving all the juicy aspects of Thaksinomics. I already added it to the two cows jokebook in Wikibooks. And for anyone who’s interested, here are some of my favorite “two cows” jokes:
SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to someone else.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and sells you milk.
NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.
BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. The government takes both of them, kill one and spill the milk in system of sewage.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
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.
SINGAPORE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed animals in an apartment.
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”.
GEORGE W. BUSH: You have two cows, which were given to you by your father. You lose both cows in a failed oil business. Eventually your father decides that it is worth overlooking the failures in your life in order to have political power again, so he cheats you into office. Thousands die with nothing fixed and except two elections and some CEO problems. You manage the economy for a couple of years and it turns out like your two cows. You invade two countries which quickly become symbols of your two cows. Somehow you manage to make America one of the world’s most hated countries in the course of a couple of years. One wouldn’t think it could be so hard to manage two cows.
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.
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 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. 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.
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.
SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
EUROPEAN FEDERALISM: You have two cows which cost too much money to care for because everybody is buying milk imported from some cheap east-European country and would never pay the fortune you’d have to ask for your cows’ milk. So you apply for financial aid from the European Union to subsidize your cows and are granted enough subsidies. You then sell your milk at the former elevated price to some government-owned distributor which then dumps your milk onto the market at east-European prices to make Europe competitive. You spend the money you got as a subsidy on two new cows and then go on a demonstration to Brussels complaining that the European farm-policy is going drive you out of your job.
For a very exhaustive list, see this entry in Wikibooks.