Why the pilgrims survived...

[billc]

This year, the Thanksgiving story will be recounted by John Stossel, Libertarian host on Fox business news...

http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/happy-starvation-day.html

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.
Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.
The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.
That's why they nearly all starved.
When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.
"So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented," wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, (I) (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land."
In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic.
"This had very good success," Bradford wrote, "for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many."
Because of the change, the first Thanksgiving could be held in November 1623.

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What Plymouth suffered under communalism was what economists today call the tragedy of the commons.

The problem has been known since ancient Greece. As Aristotle noted, "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."
If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free-rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else. Soon, the pot is empty.
What private property does — as the Pilgrims discovered — is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce far more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

[Tez3]

Deja vu anyone?

 

[granfire]

Deja vu anyone?

Too much Wild Turkey.

 

[Tez3]

Bill, this is a repeat of a thread you've posted before, it's the same argument and you are still going down the wrong path.

 

[granfire]

Bill, this is a repeat of a thread you've posted before, it's the same argument and you are still going down the wrong path.

:trollsign:feedtroll

 

[billc]

Today is Thanksgiving, and the reason for the holiday should be shared. Happy Thanksgiving Tez. Besides, you don't say, "Well, that was Christmas, won't have to do that ever again." You repeat the holiday every year so the background on the holiday should be repeated as well.

 

[Tez3]

Today is Thanksgiving, and the reason for the holiday should be shared. Happy Thanksgiving Tez. Besides, you don't say, "Well, that was Christmas, won't have to do that ever again." You repeat the holiday every year so the background on the holiday should be repeated as well.

Actually I don't say anything at all about Chrstmas, never 'do' it.

Repeating a thread is basically trolling and bringing it out every year isn't going to make it any truer.

 

[CanuckMA]

Thanksgiving was last month.

 

[elder999]

Well, thanks for posting this, billi-I mean that.

You know, I love autumn. I grew up in New York, in the Hudson Valley, where I think autumn is maybe the most beautiful season. Of course, it also meant hunting season, and returning to school, and the nearing of winter. Here in New Mexico, the turning of the seasons isn’t quite as dramatic, but the lifestyle I’ve developed has put me more in tune with them, and I still love autumn: the grapes are pressed and becoming wine, root vegetables safe in the cellar or still in the ground, apples pressed for cider or dehydrated-or just given away. Goats and pigs have been slaughtered, and this year I drew an elk tag, and took a cow-now is when we celebrate the bounty of the harvest and the hunt, take stock and give thanks for what we have to be grateful for, and turn inward with the winter, in anticipation of renewal in the spring. This is how it’s been for many people, all over the planet, for thousands of years-since we started putting seeds in the ground, I suppose, and married our lives to the turning of the seasons in a way that most of us have lost touch with.

What does it mean, though? To “give thanks?” That’s not a rhetorical question, because it means a few different things to people, depending upon their belief system. I know that, for myself……..hmmm…..I can remember my dad, back when he was not too much younger than my son is now, teaching me to pray-I think, somewhat ironically, that my dad hoped that I’d join the priesthood, as he and his father had. At any rate, he pointed out to me (when I was all of like, 6) that when I pray I should first thank God for everything-as in, well, everything, and that then I should pray for God to bestow blessings on everybody-as in, well, EVERYBODY, and that then-and only then, should I pray for blessings for myself, and to pray for them in the form of asking for God’s “help,” and that it would be Gods will what form that help was to take, not mine…..I got away from praying for a while in there, but that was always in the back of my mind: that I give thanks first.

Later-with my dad (for whom I’m forever thankful) in the ground (or, rather, the wall) nearly ten years-I met a fierce, stern man, on what turned out to be his 86[SUP]th[/SUP] birthday. Anthony Davis was a roadman in the Native American Church-a somewhat famous one, if such a thing is possible, anyway-his Comanche name meant "white thunder," and I thought it was because of his singing and his hair, but it turns out that on the day of his birth there was a thunderstorm with snow there in Oklahoma.

He taught me a lot.

He taught me how to pray, not only with tobacco, but it's tobacco prayers I'm remembering here, and, funnily enough, it was a lot like what my dad said.

” First you give thanks, then you can pray for your mother and father, then you pray for your sisters and brothers, then you pray for your friends, then you pray for people in hospitals, then you pray for people in the service, then you pray for people in prisons, then you should pray for the Dalai Lama-sister Margaret, she prays for the Pope, if you want, you should pray for the Pope, and the President, and the president over in Russia, and maybe ask Creator to open up those ayatollahs hearts, then pray for children in schools, then pray for anybody you might have left out-and then ask for help for yourself.”

All that aside, Anthony was somewhat prescient, and said many odd things to me that have proven true over the years. On the subject of gratitude and “thanks” though, he said this to me:

Ever had a pebble in your shoe? You should learn to thank the pebble in your shoe.

Now, if you’re thinking, “well, what the hell does that mean? “ don’t worry. That was, I’m pretty sure, in 2001, around Christmas, and it’s pretty well what I thought for nearly a decade-I’m slow like that sometimes.

The first true conservative I ever knew personally was Pat O’Neill-we met in middle school, in 6[SUP]th[/SUP] grade-he was funny, smart, rabidly anti-communist (this was 1971, after all) and-like me-a little weird. He was the first friend I ever had, though, where I recognized that I was learning something from him-intellectually, anyway-not the first friend that I learned from, but the first one where I saw it and actively sought it out . We lost touch after college, and later reconnected-as I have with so many people from that part of my life-on Facebook. Pat was diagnosed with bone cancer a few years back, and has handled the entire thing the way it seems he’s handled things his entire life-with grace. Two years after a surgery to save his leg, that had been followed with taking up rock climbing (at 46) and trips to Ireland and China, his cancer returned, and his left leg was removed below the knee, and so it was that last March, in 2010, I looked at pictures of Pat-looking for all the world like an older Iraqi-war amputee-learning to walk with his new prosthetic leg with his usual grace and courage, each limping step bringing him closer to….closer to what we all are a day closer to each and every day, our own ultimate harvest.

Anyway, I looked at Pat’s picture, with his shiny metal leg-and I was filled with gratitude for the “pebble in my shoe.” Pat’s in hospice on this Thanksgiving-he danced with his daughter at her wedding this past summer, though, and I’m praying that his exit-his harvest-is as graceful as his life has been.

I’d be thankful for that.

So, this year, as my old friend lays dying, I’m thankful for the year’s harvest. Thankful for a wife that I still pinch myself over, to be sure that she’s actually sitting next to me, and I’m not just dreaming. For two wonderful children. For my father-gone nearly 25 years, now, and still teaching me. For Anthony,who would call me “nephew” one day, and ignore me when next we me-who left us for his own harvest . I’m thankful for my mother, siblings, nephews, and wonderful friends and teachers. I’m thankful my dogs still think that I’m God, or act like it, anyway…:lol: -All my relations, is how many Indians put it, and so that’s how I pray. I’m thankful for having what I’m told is a “wonderful intellect,” even if I do feel like an idiot from time to time, I manage to enjoy it. I’m thankful for so many authors and their books that I can’t even begin. And music.And art. And all manner of foods. And having a job I enjoy, with coworkers and subordinates that I like. I’m thankful for my home, and my health-even as I fear its inevitable deterioration, and begin to think of the autumn of my life. I’m also thankful for Facebook-and living with so much wonderful technology. I’m thankful, as well, that I know how to live without it.

And I'm thankful for MartialTalk-again Bob, thank you. And I'm thankful for all the friends that I’ve "met" here:Irene, and Jenna, and Carol, and Steve, and Brian, and Canuck, and John, and Mark, and anyone I may have left out……..even-perhaps especially-the ones that are persistently the pebble in my shoe

 

[granfire]

Thank you.

 

[Tez3]

Thank you indeed.

 

[Sukerkin]

Well said, my friend - an excellent way to mould a shrouded political point into something truly personal, moving and meaningful :bows:.

It being rooted in early American history, we obviously don't do Thanksgiving over here. But we do have many other feast days of ancient vintage and perhaps we should make more use of them ourselves as a way of giving thanks for what is right in our lives rather than constantly dwelling on what is bad.

 

[Xue Sheng]

elder999

You taught me something today, thank you

XS :asian:

 

[elder999]

Patrick G. O'Neill, RIP.

Sad at his passing, but glad he was here........:asian: