The Glade 4.0

I've been thinking about this for a while, and it all just seems to add up too well not to mention it. I have a theory that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a direct continuation from the last part of Johnathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, taking place several hundred years after Gulliver left Houyhnhnm-land.

The ponies are, of course, the descendants of the novel's Houyhnhnms. At some point they either eradicated the Yahoos themselves, or simply allowed them to die out on their own. With the Yahoos gone, things became markedly less tense as there was no longer a race of violent, filthy primates running all over the place to contend with. Over time, the Houyhnhnms grew physically smaller, as they now lacked any real need for combat ability, and such a change in their bodies meant they could go on while consuming fewer resources and having a less dramatic impact on the natural world around them despite their increased prosperity. This could have been a change brought on deliberately, via selective breeding over several generations, or it could have just been that the smaller Houyhnhnms were cuter, and when you've got **** to worry about, cuteness becomes the #1 natural selector.

The political, economic, and social atmospheres portrayed among the ponies in the TV show all seem to reflect the ideals of the Houyhnhnms from Swift's novel, though notable differences do exist.

-While the ponies do have a supreme leader, she is never shown issuing punishments to lawbreakers, organizing ponies for foreign conflict, or really doing anything to flex her authority. The commands she issues to her subordinates, if they can really be considered that, are more like suggestions ("Go make some friends."--so speaketh the Tyrant). Aside from her supernatural role involving her control over the sun, she seems to be, at most, a sort of grand coordinator in her ponies' service, and celebrated figurehead. Lower ranked ponies in positions of leadership (the only real example we have so far is Ponyville's town mayor) also seem to adopt the role of coordinator rather than governor. This political model is a logical extension of how the Houyhnhnms would eventually form a government of their own after having neutralized the Yahoos. Despite the fact that they are peaceful creatures with little need for heavy-handed governance, the lack of what was previously their main external threat would cause a sudden, sharp increase in population growth. Soon they would find it necessary to fragment their populace into towns, cities, provinces, etc., which is a neigh nigh impossible task without oversight from a system of tiered leadership.

-The Houyhnhnms, at the time they appeared in the narrative of Gulliver's Travels, would have most likely found the idea of capitalism to be equal parts abhorrent and nonsensical. However, it's made pretty clear that the ponies in Friendship is Magic do in fact have have money, which they use in exchange for goods (and perhaps services, though I don't think we've seen this explicitly). This would at first seem to present a major disparity between the nature of Houyhnhnms and FiM ponies, though upon closer inspection the ponies don't really seem to be following anything close to a capitalistic model. First of all, scarcity seems to be completely absent from the land of Equestria. There are no impoverished ponies, and even the non-pony animals all seem to get what they need. Going even further, there seem to be no wealth-based castes whatsoever. Nopony is poorer or wealthier than anypony else (and yes, I kind of want to kill myself for using ponified pronouns). Adding on top of that, while the ponies do seem to have formal jobs not unlike our real-life human jobs, their work is generally shown as being performed voluntarily, with no monetary compensation.* So if there's no such thing as "rich" and "poor" in Equestria, all the citizens are accounted for in regards to their needs, and the ponies perform their jobs as free charity work, then what the hell are they doing with money? Well, I'd have to guess they've set up a sort of pseudo-economy that harmlessly floats atop their essentially communistic system. A modest amount of currency has been minted, and the ponies use it in exchange for luxuries (or just extra necessities) that they fancy. The money only exists to help keep track of things and make sure everyone has a shot at these items. It can probably be assumed that there is no manner of pony Wall Street, and the typical machinations of any true, modern economy (inflation/deflation, loaned money with interest, depression, etc.) are either nonexistent or insignificant and safely ignored.

*Applejack, of course, presents an exception here. She is seen selling her apples at her stand multiple times. She also complained in episode 3 about needing to raise money to pay for a hip replacement for her grandmother, which indicates that perhaps not all the ponies' needs are properly met for free, after all. Even if she was telling this story just to gain sympathy from Twilight, it wouldn't make sense to suggest that she was making it up, because in that case the story wouldn't have made any sense to Twilight (i.e. Twilight wouldn't understand why Applejack needs financial help for her grandmother's medical issues when the land provides free universal health care). In the end, we are left with only one explanation for all of this: Applejack has a southern accent. Those with southern accents, as we all know, are pretty much inseparable from laissez-faire capitalism, and would certainly never find themselves involved in a communistic or socialistic system. Just go find a person with a southern accent and ask him or her about this if you don't believe me. Thus Ponyville has decided to allow Applejack and the rest of the Apple family to operate independently of the town. Her farm's apples and apple accessories are traded as luxury goods, but the family is still expected to provide charity work during seasonal events (and accordingly, the farm receives charity help as well).

-The ponies in Friendship is Magic seem to correlate rather closely with the Houyhnhnms from a social standpoint. While human social status is typically based on wealth, confidence, and sex appeal, the ponies seem to celebrate (rather than rank) individuals based on the strength of their abilities and the pleasantness of their demeanors. Less confident and/or less capable ponies still have friends and are helped along by others. Extra-capable ponies are lauded by the rest, but not given prolonged preferential treatment. Jerks are few in number, and are [somewhat] quickly ostracized (more on this later). However, one of the main points of intrigue in Gulliver's Travels regarding the Houyhnhnms was that they didn't have a word for "lie" and in fact had difficulty even understanding the concept of lying when it was explained to them. This is pretty clearly not the case for the ponies in Friendship is Magic, as they have been shown engaging in deceitful behavior with one another, and on some occasions they have even told outright lies (best example would be Trixie's boasting). It's probably a safe assumption that even the ghost stories the characters shared with each other in the sleepover episode would be viewed with derision and confusion by a Houyhnhnm, simply because the stories aren't true despite their innocent intent. I can only assume that this discrepancy developed over a long period of cultural evolution. The Houyhnhnms, at the time they appear in Gulliver's Travels, are living in a much older, darker age, surrounded by an adversary that epitomizes everything they stand against. Such a concept as lying would probably seem synonymous with the evil nature of the Yahoos, and as such, would be seen as utterly distasteful in any form or amount. After a few generations without any Yahoos around to act as horrifying examples of extreme cruelty and deceit, the concept of falsification gradually lost its stigma and gained a mild place in pony culture. Regarding the few jerk ponies like Trixie and the two brats from Appleblooms class: the fact that these individuals gained so much temporary sway among onlookers can be seen as testament to the pony society's typical nature. The other ponies believed Trixie's claims because it's simply not in a pony's nature to blatantly lie in order to better her or his situation. They couldn't really understand Trixie's motives, so they accepted what she said blindly. And although it doesn't involve deceit per se, Applebloom's classmates developed a popular following simply because being an ******* and putting others down is a relatively foreign concept to the ponies. The other classmates simply assumed that the two jerks were raising valid concerns regarding Applebloom while propping themselves up for equally valid reasons. When this illusion was challenged, it all fell apart.