Fun_People Archive
2 May
Douglas Adam's Just-So Stories -- Why We Vote

Date: Tue,  2 May 95 22:02:47 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Douglas Adam's Just-So Stories -- Why We Vote

Forwarded-by: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: "Chuck Yerkes" <yerkes_chuck@jpmorgan.com>

[A Giant Space craft has landed.  A 100 foot tall robot emerges and says
"We Come In Peace.  Take Me To Your Lizard... then...]

  "It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

  "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

  "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and
coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him,
"nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its
world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate
the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

  "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

  "I did," said Ford. "It is."

  "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why
don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

  "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the
vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in
more or less approximates to the government they want."

  "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

  "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

  "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

  "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong
lizard might get in."

	-- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

© 1995 Peter Langston