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Liberty is a Cheese Sandwich
Thursday, 22 May 2008 09:49So as I was trying to explain the Revolution to this girl in my Statistics class (the kind who says things like, "OMG, are you actually *defending* the Reign of Terror!!1 :O") I thought up this (pretty lame) allegory. On the off-chance you might find it amusing, I've decided to share it.
Say you're in a city with a lot of competing burger corporations. They're all pretty much the same: they use contaminated meat, treat their employees horribly and pay them sub-standard wages... Everything you would expect from a burger corporation. Now, some people manage to "overthrow" one of them; let's say they indict the owners for fraud. The owners are convicted, the company folds. In its place, opens a neighborhood cheese-sandwich shop. Let's call it Tricolor Sandwiches. Just because.
...Let's skip a bit ahead, and say, for the sake of argument, that Tricolor Sandwiches has now been around for a few years. It is now run by committee. (I'm sure you can see where this is going.) As a small shop, Tricolor Sandwiches is having a hard time staying afloat amidst the Coalition of Burger Corporations, led by British Burger. Now, remember, of course, that these burger corporations are feeding people contaminated meat that makes them sick and participating in all sorts of other abuses. As the moment they're mounting a vicious advertising campaign to try to drive Tricolor Sandwiches under. The committee in charge of Tricolor Sandwiches is on the offensive as far as this goes, but obviously its budget is much smaller.
Then come the real problems. Some of the employees have decided that the solution to this is to go out and (violently) force people to eat cheese sandwiches. This is beginning to turn off even some of the regular customers, who see these tactics as somewhat extreme. Some members of the committee running Tricolor Sandwiches are in favor of these measures, seeing them as the only way they can compete with the Burger Coalition. Others are... less so, feeling that force-feeding people sandwiches is not what Tricolor Sandwiches is about.
Some employees in this group have come out with a deceptively attractive message: they point out that people have the right not to eat cheese sandwiches. Not content with this (technically true) observation, they begin to extol the qualities of burgers and of British Burger in particular. Now, this all well and good, except for, number one, the fact that they work for Tricolor Sandwiches and they're helping the competition with their advertising and, number two, perhaps more important, the competition is not just selling a different kind of sandwich, but one which is making people sick (along with all their other vices).
What's a sandwich-shop committee to do? Well, after much deliberation, it decides, collectively, that it has no choice but to fire the instigators of these ultra- and citra-sandwich movements, which are undermining the aims of Tricolor Sandwiches and everything it stands for. This makes their friends angry, and they convince each other and the still undecided employees that a small number of the committee members are to blame and that they only had those other employees fired because they were greedy and trying to emulate the corporations of the Burger Coalition. Few of them actually believe this, but they are jealous of these committee members' popularity with customers, which they want to believe is part of a plot to do what the friends of the sandwich ultras and citras say they're going to do (and as everyone knows, people believe what they want to believe the vast majority of the time), so they all conspire to have those committee members fired.
After those committee members are fired, Tricolor Sandwiches begins to look more and more like the Burger Coalition, and eventually even starts selling (contaminated, of course) burgers itself. Both the new Tricolor Sandwiches (which will eventually become Tricolor Burger, and then Fleur-de-Lys Burger) and the Burger Coalition, though it takes some years for them to resume friendly relations, have an interest in blackening the old Tricolor Sandwiches through the persons of those fired committee members, which they do. So successfully in fact, that today, even those whose ambition it is to start little cheese-sandwich shops of their own, curse the names of those committee members as the cheese sandwich equivalent of the burger CEOs.
The end. >.>
I do apologize for the lame/capitalistic undertones of that explanation. It was the only one I could think of, because I am lame and unimaginative like that. But even if I did make the Republic into a business-something which I have the sneaking suspicion is absolutely unforgiveable, by my own standards--at least I made it a small one, such as could be found in a virtuous republic. I think it's probably best just to view this as crack though. Because it pretty much is. *facepalm*
Say you're in a city with a lot of competing burger corporations. They're all pretty much the same: they use contaminated meat, treat their employees horribly and pay them sub-standard wages... Everything you would expect from a burger corporation. Now, some people manage to "overthrow" one of them; let's say they indict the owners for fraud. The owners are convicted, the company folds. In its place, opens a neighborhood cheese-sandwich shop. Let's call it Tricolor Sandwiches. Just because.
...Let's skip a bit ahead, and say, for the sake of argument, that Tricolor Sandwiches has now been around for a few years. It is now run by committee. (I'm sure you can see where this is going.) As a small shop, Tricolor Sandwiches is having a hard time staying afloat amidst the Coalition of Burger Corporations, led by British Burger. Now, remember, of course, that these burger corporations are feeding people contaminated meat that makes them sick and participating in all sorts of other abuses. As the moment they're mounting a vicious advertising campaign to try to drive Tricolor Sandwiches under. The committee in charge of Tricolor Sandwiches is on the offensive as far as this goes, but obviously its budget is much smaller.
Then come the real problems. Some of the employees have decided that the solution to this is to go out and (violently) force people to eat cheese sandwiches. This is beginning to turn off even some of the regular customers, who see these tactics as somewhat extreme. Some members of the committee running Tricolor Sandwiches are in favor of these measures, seeing them as the only way they can compete with the Burger Coalition. Others are... less so, feeling that force-feeding people sandwiches is not what Tricolor Sandwiches is about.
Some employees in this group have come out with a deceptively attractive message: they point out that people have the right not to eat cheese sandwiches. Not content with this (technically true) observation, they begin to extol the qualities of burgers and of British Burger in particular. Now, this all well and good, except for, number one, the fact that they work for Tricolor Sandwiches and they're helping the competition with their advertising and, number two, perhaps more important, the competition is not just selling a different kind of sandwich, but one which is making people sick (along with all their other vices).
What's a sandwich-shop committee to do? Well, after much deliberation, it decides, collectively, that it has no choice but to fire the instigators of these ultra- and citra-sandwich movements, which are undermining the aims of Tricolor Sandwiches and everything it stands for. This makes their friends angry, and they convince each other and the still undecided employees that a small number of the committee members are to blame and that they only had those other employees fired because they were greedy and trying to emulate the corporations of the Burger Coalition. Few of them actually believe this, but they are jealous of these committee members' popularity with customers, which they want to believe is part of a plot to do what the friends of the sandwich ultras and citras say they're going to do (and as everyone knows, people believe what they want to believe the vast majority of the time), so they all conspire to have those committee members fired.
After those committee members are fired, Tricolor Sandwiches begins to look more and more like the Burger Coalition, and eventually even starts selling (contaminated, of course) burgers itself. Both the new Tricolor Sandwiches (which will eventually become Tricolor Burger, and then Fleur-de-Lys Burger) and the Burger Coalition, though it takes some years for them to resume friendly relations, have an interest in blackening the old Tricolor Sandwiches through the persons of those fired committee members, which they do. So successfully in fact, that today, even those whose ambition it is to start little cheese-sandwich shops of their own, curse the names of those committee members as the cheese sandwich equivalent of the burger CEOs.
The end. >.>
I do apologize for the lame/capitalistic undertones of that explanation. It was the only one I could think of, because I am lame and unimaginative like that. But even if I did make the Republic into a business-something which I have the sneaking suspicion is absolutely unforgiveable, by my own standards--at least I made it a small one, such as could be found in a virtuous republic. I think it's probably best just to view this as crack though. Because it pretty much is. *facepalm*
