Grateful for Not Starving

Guest Post by John Stossel

Grateful for Not Starving

When we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I will give thanks for property rights.

Property rights allow each individual or family to do what we want with our small piece of the world without having to answer to the whole community.

On Thanksgiving, we’ll probably be told to think of America as one big family — and for some people, government is the head of that family. That idea warms the hearts of America’s new “democratic socialists.”

But thinking like that nearly destroyed this nation before it began.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth didn’t share a feast with Indians after arriving in 1620 because America was so filled with bounty.

Instead, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death. They’d tried to farm collectively — the entire community owning all the land and sharing everything, like socialists. Gov. William Bradford wrote, “By the spring, our food stores were used up and people grew weak and thin. Some swelled with hunger.”

Then, writes Bradford, “After much debate (I) assigned each family a parcel of land… (T)his had very good success, because it made every hand industrious.”

Crop production increased because workers reaped direct benefits of their own effort. They stopped hoping someone else would do the hard work.

It’s not that the Pilgrims were lazy or weak. They’d risked their lives to cross an ocean to try to build a community from scratch. But in tiny, often imperceptible ways, we each do a less efficient job, and pay less attention to the task at hand, if we think the whole community is responsible for that task.

The Pilgrims were the same people after their switch from collective to individual farming — from socialism to capitalism, as it were — but after the switch, they thrived. That led to the first Thanksgiving in 1623.

The bounty for which we give thanks this week was made possible by that early course correction to private property.

I worry that, 400 years later, we’ve turned into ingrates. Instead of celebrating individual producers, Americans give thanks to a gigantic government for handouts.

It’s not just the poor who get a helping hand. Middle- and even upper-class Americans have been taught to expect government to guarantee health insurance programs, dispense our retirement income, run our schools and provide security.

We do things as a single, unanimous unit that could be done better by private individuals and the voluntary groups we form. Why?

I think the idea of everyone pulling together under the warm umbrella of wise political leaders, as if all 330 million Americans sat around the same dinner table, makes people feel cozy and safe.

But it’s a dangerous illusion.

It’s hard enough to get a real family to agree on things for the holidays. Children fight. Tastes differ. Not everyone wants to hear the same music.

On a small scale like that, we know each other well enough to forgive slights such as an uncle knocking over the gravy boat or the kids playing loud music.

But trying to do that with 330 million strangers is a formula for disaster.

The result of pretending we’re one big household that can manage everything collectively is more than $20 trillion of debt and a million complicated laws. Then we fight about who should be in charge of it all.

Collective farming nearly starved the Pilgrims. It also starved tens of millions in the Soviet Union and in Communist China. And it’s not just a farming problem.

Doing anything collectively, especially if you do it involuntarily, is a bad, inefficient idea.

Government can force everyone into the same centrally-dictated plan, but in doing so it stifles individual initiative and drive. Economists call it the “tragedy of the commons,” and it happens whether the individual’s goal is to make food, build houses or invent a better running shoe.

This holiday, I’ll be thankful that the Pilgrims were smart enough to stop doing things the hard way. Modern America should learn from that.

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Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Unfortunately, we’re not going to learn from others’ mistakes. We’re going to get “free” healthcare, “free” college, “free” everything until we run everything into the ground. Most people here understand the expression “If you think it’s expensive now, just wait until it’s free”. Most people in society don’t understand that, though, and they get to vote.

surfaddict
surfaddict

It’s not FREE, Its a RIGHT!!!
Half the voters believe such nonsense!

MMinLamesa
MMinLamesa

Ending a thoughtful piece with this bit of fanciful hoping, “Modern America should learn from that.”

In fact, we’re going in the exact opposite direction. A majority of millennials favor socialism. Over 1/2(and climbing) of all families get a government check of some sort. Their heroine is that idiot from NY. We’re electing moslims to Congress! Look at that nut in AZ that won the senate seat. And the 24/7 backdrop is the left dominated echo chamber which is relentless trying to make us sane Americans look like the kooks.

Couple the idiocy and lack of critical thinking the teacher’s unions have inflicted on our young people with the massive influx of legal & illegal immigrants and things look grim.

It’s a wonder we’ve held on this long. How’s that saying go? It happened slowly and then all at once.

President Trump should go all in. ALL IN. I just don’t get his pussy footing. REgressives will never like him-for a while he was inside their OODA loop but he seems to have bogged down.

grace country pastor

The real reason the pilgrims almost starved? They tried to live like this…

Acts 4:32-35 KJV… “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.”

Does not work in this dispensation. Reason? Jesus says not to be concerned with realities physical needs.

Matthew 6:31-33 KJV… “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Rather, Paul instructs:

2 Thessalonians 3:10-12 KJV… “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.”

Simple.

JimmyTorpedo
JimmyTorpedo

You forgot Exodus 21: 7; “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. ”
Enough with the Biblical BS GCP
We can all pick and choose good sounding passages…

grace country pastor

Biblical BS… interesting. I also didn’t include:

Gen 6:14… “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.”

You know why? God was speaking to Noah, not to me. The difference is far more critical than you’ve clearly ever given thought to.

“We can all pick and choose good sounding passages…”

You pick yours wrongly divided, I’ll pick mine rightly divided; and as for me:

2 Cor 4:1-2… “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”

Have a nice Thanksgiving JimmyTorpedo.

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

Private property rights? What are those. Just TRY doing with your property what YOU wish and see how far you get. And by the way, WHOSE property is it really? Do you have to pay property taxes on it? If you are in arrears, how long before the government comes and simply TAKES “your” property away (and kills you if you resist)?

If not for the presence of slavery in this country, the Declaration of Independence likely would have read “among them are life, liberty, and property” rather than “pursuit of happiness.” But Jefferson was afraid that “property” would be taken to mean all the human beings that were enslaved by him and many others, so he changed the words.

Now we don’t even truly own our own bodies, as the government won’t let us put into them what we wish, won’t allow us to do with them what we wish, etc.

This Thanksgiving, be thankful for the freedoms and liberties you have left.

Jdog
Jdog

Until we get government out of our schools, our problems will continue to get worse. Government does not just indoctrinate people on what to think, they condition them on how to think. That is the crux of the problem. You see, not one in a hundred people today can actually think logically. They do not understand logical fallacy which means they are unable to decern truth from lies.

So long as government schools exist, the population will be ignorant serfs doing the bidding of the corporations who program them via the media… The schools facilitate the process by making sure the lower classes are incapable of logical thought.

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

Whenever anyone asks me what is the most destructive government program, I always say government schooling. Truly there is NO greater destructive force, for it lays the foundation for a lifetime of blind subservience, acquiescence, and worship of government power.

goofyfoot
goofyfoot

What do u mean we haven’t progressed from the 1600’s? Even the pilgrims would b envious of today’s Thanksgiving. Where else can u get up at 4am on turkey day and go fight the gibsmedats and Shanequa’s for a 90″ idiot box that has 600 channels, spies on you and uses more electricity than a clothes dryer.

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