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Townhall
Thankful
for Property
John
Stossel
Nov
27, 2013
Had
today's politicians and opinion-makers been in power four centuries
ago, Americans might celebrate "Starvation Day" this week,
not Thanksgiving.
The
Pilgrims started out with communal property rules. When they first
settled at Plymouth, they were told: "Share everything, share
the work, and we'll share the harvest."
The
colony's contract said their new settlement was to be a "common."
Everyone was to receive necessities out of the common stock. There
was to be little individual property.
That
wasn't the only thing about the Plymouth Colony that sounds like it
was from Karl Marx: Its labor was to be organized according to the
different capabilities of the settlers. People would produce
according to their abilities and consume according to their needs.
That sure sounds fair.
They
nearly starved and created what economists call the "tragedy of
the commons."
If
people can access the same stuff by working less, they will. Plymouth
settlers faked illness instead of working the common property. The
harvest was meager, and for two years, there was famine. But then,
after the colony's governor, William Bradford, wrote that they should
"set corn every man for his own particular," they dropped
the commons idea. He assigned to every family a parcel of land to
treat as its own.
The
results were dramatic. Much more corn was planted. Instead of famine,
there was plenty. Thanks to private property, they got food -- and
thanks to it, we have food today.
This
doesn't mean Pilgrims themselves saw the broader economic
implications of what they'd been through. "I don't think they
were celebrating Thanksgiving because they'd realized that capitalism
works and communal property is a failure," says economist Russ
Roberts. "I think they were just happy to be alive."
I
wish people understood. This idea that happiness and equality lie in
banding together and doing things as a commune is appealing. It's the
principle behind the Soviet Union, Medicare, the Vietnam War,
Obamacare and so on. Some communal central planning is helpful, but
too much is dangerous. The Pilgrims weren't the first settlers on the
East Coast of the New World to make this mistake.
Read the
rest of the
article at Townhall
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