Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A Very Special Fairy Tale

(Please look up the definitions of irony and satire before reading the following.)  

Once upon a time in the deep green woods, their lived an evil corporation that built terrible machines that polluted the earth and threatened the planet's very existence. This evil corporation was called General Motors and was one of a bunch of nasty, despicable creatures who served no one but themselves, their executives, and their stockholders. This evil creature was helped by a group of kindly, but unsuspecting little people called the United Auto Workers who unknowingly aided this evil creature in order to make a lot of money to feed their families (and buy some pretty cool stuff). Other groups of the United Auto Workers helped the other evil corporations who were also doing terrible things to the planet, but they were also good people. 

Well one day, the UAW sat down with this evil corporation and said, "We don't really care about what you want to do, but we want to be sure that we get to continue to help you, and that you will continue to pay us a lot of money."  

Not terribly surprised at this statement, the corporation said in return, "What about your health plan and stuff like that?  The truth of the matter is that we're running out of money from giving so much to you, and the other evil corporations are slowly killing us. We don't know how long we will even be around, let alone whether you will get to keep helping us."  

The UAW had expected this, and replied, "Pay us some money and let us take care of the health care thing and all the rest of that stuff. We have some connections in government and we think that pretty soon they will take care of all of this for everybody anyway. Then neither of us will have to worry about it, and we will still be getting all that money. But in return, you have to make sure that we are still getting paid a lot of money to help you."  

And the evil corporation said, "Wait a minute! You've been getting a lot of money for a long time, and that's one of the big reasons that we are running out of it. We can't do what you ask."  

With that, the UAW got really mad, and said, "If you won't keep giving us the money, we won't help you anymore. That will mean that the other evil corporations will take over polluting the world, and by showing them that we mean business in dealing with you, they will do what we ask." And with that, they went on strike.  

The End  

Well of course that's not really the end of the story and every Fairy Tale needs a happy ending, so here it is: 

Eventually the two groups made up, GM caved in for the most part, and they went back to building the terrible machines that were destroying the world, but the damage to the evil corporation had been done. While it didn't happen right away, pretty soon the two were again fighting over money, and the evil corporation had even less than they had before; but they kept giving the UAW more and more, mostly because it had become a habit. Eventually the evil corporation died, because evil corporations can't survive when they can't make money doing bad things like polluting the earth. 

The funny thing though, is that the UAW died too. It seemed that the other evil corporations that gave in to the UAW died the same way that GM did, and the ones that didn't give in found out that they didn't need the UAW to continue to build machines to destroy the earth. They also found that they made more and better machines and made more money without them. But without the chance to help the evil corporations, the UAW couldn't survive. ... and the world lived happily ever after 

REALLY THE END!

 

1 comment:

Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

Do I label this a fable or a prophecy?

Time will tell, time will tell...