This Washington Post
story about the planned importation of U.S. bulls to
Russia…

Twenty-nine black-and-white aspiring sires have set hoof in
Russia, part of the first export of live Virginia Holstein bulls to
that country, Gov.
Robert F. McDonnell (R) announced last week. Thirty more
will head there in April. 

Russian farmers want American bulls to improve dairy-herd
genetics in a land hampered first by collective farming, then by
the collapse
of the Soviet Union….

…makes it impossible to resist repeating this old economics
joke:

Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one
and gives it to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. You give them to the
Government, and the Government then gives you some milk.
Fascism: You have two cows. You give them to the
Government, and the Government then sells you some milk.
Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a
bull.
Nazism: You have two cows. The Government shoots you and
takes the cows.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. You give them to the
Government, they shoot one and milk the other then pour the milk
down the drain.

Seriously though, details from the Post story about why
all this cow shuffling is necessary aren’t nearly as funny as the
joke above. And the joke above really isn’t that funny.

Instead of raising dairy cattle for milk and beef cattle for
meat, Soviet collective farms had “dual-use” cattle, which would be
milked for a while, then killed for meat, Osipenko said. Those
one-size-fits-all cattle may have embodied an egalitarian ideal,
but both milk and meat were mediocre, said Osipenko, a native of
Ukraine who recalled his mother boiling beef for hours in a
fruitless attempt to tenderize it.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, many dairy herds were all but
wiped out as hungry Russians consumed them for food.

“There was a terrible crisis, apparently, and they pretty much
ate their seed stock,” said Patrick Comyn, a large-animal
veterinarian with the private Virginia Herd Health Management
Services who worked on the deal.

For an even less funny economics joke, go
here. Worse still, go here.