Guest Post by John Stossel
Families will argue this Thanksgiving.
Such arguments have a long tradition.
The Pilgrims had clashing ideas about how to organize their settlement in the New World. The resolution of that debate made the first Thanksgiving possible.
The Pilgrims were religious, united by faith and a powerful desire to start anew, away from religious persecution in the Old World. Each member of the community professed a desire to labor together, on behalf of the whole settlement.
In other words: socialism.
But when they tried that, the Pilgrims almost starved.
Their collective farming — the whole community deciding when and how much to plant, when to harvest, who would do the work — was an inefficient disaster.
“By the spring,” Pilgrim leader William Bradford wrote in his diary, “our food stores were used up and people grew weak and thin. Some swelled with hunger… So they began to think how … they might not still thus languish in misery.”
His answer: divide the commune into parcels and assign each Pilgrim family its own property. As Bradford put it, they “set corn every man for his own particular. … Assigned every family a parcel of land.”
Private property protects us from what economists call the tragedy of the commons. The “commons” is a shared resource. That means it’s really owned by no one, and no one person has much incentive to protect it or develop it.
The Pilgrims’ simple change to private ownership, wrote Bradford, “made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Soon they had so much plenty that they could share food with the natives.
The Indians weren’t socialists, either. They had property rules of their own. That helped them grow enough so they had plenty, even during cold winters.
When property rights are tossed aside, even for the sake of religious fellowship or in the name of the working class, people just don’t work as hard.
Why farm all day — or invent new ways of farming — when everyone else will get an equal share?
You may not intend to be a slacker, but suddenly, reasons to stay in bed seem more compelling than they did when your own livelihood and family were dependent on your own efforts.
Pilgrim teenagers were especially lazy. Some claimed they were too sick to work. Some stole the commune’s crops, picking corn at night, before it was ready.
But once Bradford created private lots, the Pilgrims worked hard. They could have sat around arguing about who should do how much work, whether English tribes or Indian ones were culturally superior, and what God would decree if She/He set rules for farming.
None of that would have yielded the bounty that a simple division of land into private lots did.
When people respect property rights, they also interact more peacefully.
At this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, if people start arguing about how society should be run, try being a peacemaker by suggesting that everyone should get to decide what to do with their own property.
If your uncle wants government to tax imports or thinks police should seize people’s marijuana, tell him that he doesn’t have to smoke weed or buy Chinese products, but he should keep his hands off other people’s property.
If your niece says everyone loves socialism now, remind her she has enough trouble managing her own life without telling the rest of the world what to do. When families don’t agree, they certainly shouldn’t try to run millions of other people’s lives.
In America today, religious groups practice different rites but usually don’t demand that government ban others’ practices. Private schools set curricula without nasty public fights. Businesses stock shelves without politicians fighting about which products they should carry.
All those systems work pretty well. That’s because they are private.
In most of our lives, private ownership makes political arguments unnecessary.
I’m thankful for that.
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I’m thankful I’ll never have to break bread with this sanctimonious asshole.
Are u a retard.
No.
Stossel, on the other hand, is crazy as an outhouse rat. He is a proponent of vulgar libertarianism who sees government plots under every rock, as evidenced by his contention here that the Pilgrims were socialists. The Puritans did not “hold all things in common” but were in fact beholding to a private corporation chartered by the English crown. Stossel is full of baloney. He supports the legalization of blackmail because it keeps people in line. He’s a sad case. He was once a respected consumer advocate reporter and since devolved into a widely panned corporatist/libertarian shill.
Why so anti libertarian?
Libertarians are correct in their view that oppressive government needs to be curtailed. Free markets with no constraints lead to extreme economic imbalance. Privatization of everything leads to further exploitation of the underclass. The U.S. is already a de facto oligarchy. Government is inept at many things, but we need some mechanism to maintain the elements of civilization that we share, like roads, water systems, and national defense. When Ronald Reagan declared that government was a bad beast that needed starving it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Deer season ended yesterday here.
It’s Duck season!
Me thinks the person who is off the rails here is Duck N. Cover. We’ve not had real free markets since I was born (and that is a long time). However, if we did, we would truly be a free republic where supply and demand are a true barometer of the needs of the majority. True capitalism, although not without some faults, raises all boats. We do need a government that has a standing army to protect the borders and, we need local and state governments to keep public infrastructure (highways, sewer system, water systems, etc) in place. Beyond that, I’m not sure wtf you are talking about.
My apologies if I have not been clear. My gripe with many libertarians is their belief that privatization of social institutions, for example, prisons, infrastructure, and mail delivery, will be more efficient than if they are government managed. Much of my wariness of unregulated capitalism comes from Picketty’s argument in “Capitalism in the 21st Century” in which he points out that, in an economy where the rate of return on capital outstrips the rate of growth, inherited wealth will always grow faster than earned wealth. Eventually wealth concentrates at levels incompatible with democracy, let alone social justice.
Thank you for clarifying. As I said previously, capitalism is not without its faults. However, it is still what keeps entrepreneur’s in the game (incentive to innovate) and, has lifted more people out of poverty (creation of jobs) than any other ‘ism’ out there.
Now, that all being said, your post shows you are thinking beyond first level, which is good. Your last sentence however, tells me you are more than likely a millennial and/or a college grad that has been indoctrinated into believing the “social justice” BS that really hides behind what the real intention is. Remember, democracy (without a republic) is mob rule and social justice is lipstick on a pig for socialism.
Guilty as charged. I’m actually an old fart whose 1960s idealism sometimes clouds the view. Your pointed post gives me more to think about–always a good thing.
Wow, I’m kinda blown away by your reply. Why you ask? Well, I just got through telling someone that probably nothing we say on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform ever changes what an opposing view thinks. That it is usually a waste of time and only causes more anger and dissension, by both sides. However, your reply gives me hope that there are still people out there that can think, and not just be blown around by the wind and easily indoctrinated. God Bless you, sir and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving Day!
I certainly understand the feeling. A lot of what appears in these comments sections is belligerent vitriol that people mistakenly think bolsters their position. I’m always willing to absorb new points of view from thoughtful people. Here’s wishing you a great holiday, too.
Hoping for cordial discourse here is like looking for a virgin in a whorehouse.
You comment here and you take your chances.
TBP is a rough and tumble place. Admin gives us free reign to say whatever we want, but the replies to what you say can be brutal. You had best have a thick skin and be ready to defend your positions.
It’s a great place, and a ‘big family’, but it’s not for the timid…
Capitalism in the 21st Century is built on regulations.
Duck is suffering from the same idealistic delusions as the Libertarians on which he is so quick to cast aspersions…
Private property is the FOUNDATION upon which ALL other rights must lay. Far too many take it far too lightly.
Wait- is this the Pilgrims, or Jamestown? This sounds more like the Jamestown colony, if I remember correctly. Weren’t they starving to death because they came to hunt for gold, not to grow their own food?
The Great Courses (TGC) has an excellent college course on tape, Games People Play, led by Professor Scott Stevens. It’s about Game Theory, which is a fascinating subject to learn about, if you’re not familiar with it. I listened to it because I was not. One of the subjects he discussed was The Tragedy Of The Commons. I had never heard of it before, but it fit in with what I already knew about socialism. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/games-people-play-game-theory-in-life-business-and-beyond.html If you don’t want to pay the $ for the course, you might try youtube to see some of Professor Stevens’ lectures or Bittorrent.
I don’t expect to be talking politics much tomorrow. I am invited to join some friends at their home. When I’m a guest at your place, I generally don’t get into contentious issues because I don’t want to look like an asshole. I don’t shit where I eat. Plus, they’re from Eastern Europe and that food is too good to forsake over petty personal politics.
You are correct – Jamestown.
Every Thanksgiving someone trots out the “Pilgrims were socialists” line.
The story goes like this, when they arrived in North America they shared everything therefore they were socialists, and they starved. Then they embraced capitalism and prospered. Don’t bother telling them that Karl Marx wasn’t born until 1818, and Adam Smith wouldn’t show up to tell us about capitalism for another hundred years.
Let’s start with the obvious:
1-”labor together”, this colony was a for-profit venture financed by a group back in England called Merchant Adventurers. Like venture capitalists today, they expected a return on their investment. It’s seems apparent Mr Stossel is not aware of this. Socialism, it was not!
2-”United in faith” they were not. Of the 102 Mayflower passengers, only 37 were Puritan Separatists, or what today we colloquially call The Pilgrims. The other 65 were unaffiliated and were called The Strangers.
3-”away from religious persecution”, actually the Puritans were quite adept at religious persecution. They would later banish Anne Hutchinson and hang Mary Dyer for refusing to renounce their Quaker faith.
But there is an element of truth to the “socialist” fable. In a practice they called The Common Course and Condition, they did share everything when they arrived in 1620. What he left out of the narrative is that they arrived in November (i.e. winter). Not just any winter, 1620 & 1621 were in a period climatologists call “The Little Ice Age.” The Pilgrims’ first winter in North America was brutal. They had no choice but to share. All they had to live on was the meager rations they brought from England, gifts Native Americans, and whatever they could steal from Native Americans food storage pits.
Their harvest in 1621 was successful enough that they celebrated with a feast we call Thanksgiving. After the feast, an inventory was done and they realized they had greatly overestimated the harvest. They had to cut food rations to get through the winter of 1621-1622. Here’s where it gets complicated. By the first Thanksgiving, half of the colonists had died in the “Great Sickness”. Only four women survived to see Thanksgiving. Right after Thanksgiving 1621, the ship Fortune arrives with 35 new colonists (only three were women).
Of the passengers on The Fortune, Bradford noted:
“there was not so much as biscuit or cake or any other victuals for them, neither had they bedding, but some sorry things they had in their cabins; not a pot nor pan to dress any meat in; nor over many clothes…”
Also at this point there are seven women doing laundry for about eighty-five colonists. The seven women complained about doing laundry for all the bachelors. It was now that individual plots were assigned, and everyone started to make their own way. They shared when they had to in order to survive, and they “went capitalist” when they had survived the brutal winters, alloted what food they had, and finally settled in as farmers with had a full planting/harvesting season ahead of them. In the end, it had as much to do with laundry as it did with economics.
Regarding Bradford’s quote: “made all hands very industrious….”, well that was written in 1623. Recall they arrived in November 1620. The great tribulations of those first two winters were behind them at this point. That first winter, the group shared much like survivors in a lifeboat share whatever resources they have. It’s not clear how “capitalism” would have got the group through that first winter in North America.
Or Rabbit Season!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMe_4RmU3-4
You got it!
Good post, rabbit. It’s hard to imagine what these people went through. They had some stones, that’s for sure. I get antsy after a week of camping when the propane and raisin bran runs out.
All one need do is to read the journal of the Governor of the Massachusetts colony by William Bradford. It is all there in plain English. The colony started as a commune and it ended with private property being dispensed to each head of the family. Where were was a single man then he too received a plot. So you don’t have to take another’s statements on what happened, it is all clearly documented by someone that was there at the time. Any other discussion is waste of time on the issue.