Thursday, by eating a nice meal, thank the Pilgrims. They provided Thanksgiving possible.
They left that old World to flee religious persecution. They imagined a new society where everyone worked together and shared everything.
In other words, they imagined socialism. Socialism then almost killed them.
As I explain within my weekly video, the Pilgrims attempted collective farming. The entire community decided when and how much to plant, when you should harvest, and who would do the work.
Gov. William Bradford wrote in his diary that he believed that removing property and bringing it into a commonwealth would make the Pilgrims \”happy and flourishing.\”
It didn't. Soon, there wasn't enough food. \”No supply was heard of,\” wrote Bradford, \”neither knew they once they might expect any.\”
The problem, Bradford realized, was that no one desired to work. Everyone trusted others to complete the work. Many people pretended to be injured. Others stole food.
The communal system, Bradford wrote, \”was found to reproduce much confusion and discontent and retard much employment.\”
Young men complained they'd to \”spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children with no recompense.\”
Strong men thought it was an \”injustice\” they had to do more than weaker men without more compensation.
Older men thought that working as almost as much ast young men was \”indignity and disrespect.\”
Women who cooked and cleaned \”deemed it a kind of slavery.\”
The Pilgrims had run into the \”tragedy from the commons.\” No individual Pilgrim owned crops they grew, so no individual had much incentive to operate.
Bradford's solution: private property.
He assigned families a parcel of land so that they could boost their own corn. \”It made all hands very industrious, in order a lot more corn was planted than otherwise would have been,\” he wrote.
People who had claimed that \”weakness and inability\” built them into not able to work now were eager to work. \”Women now went willingly in to the field, and took their little ones with them to create corn,\” wrote Bradford.
The Pilgrims learned an important lesson about private property.
Unfortunately, people keep repeating the Pilgrims' mistakes.
Socialism is much more popular than capitalism among college students. Many want everything shared, including their student loan debt.
President Joe Biden wants to give them that by forgiving some of their student debt.
Of course, then the debt would be a common to be repaid by all taxpayers.
That would punish people who had long ago repaid their debt.
It would punish people who studied, labored, got jobs, and were working to repay college loans.
It would people who went to trade school or no school whatsoever.
It would punish poor people because student loans are mainly held by the relatively rich.
Government granted student education loans already create bad incentives.
People that do not like or take advantage of college are encouraged to take out loans they cannot afford and go to expensive colleges anyway.
Colleges increase their tuition, knowing that government will pay what students don't.
Forgiving student debt would make everything worse.
Fortunately, Biden's education loan forgiveness program ran up against legal challenges. I hope it's dead.
Students should learn in the Pilgrims: take responsibility for your own debt, strive to pay for them back, and don't expect the public to fund your bad decisions.
Bottom line: In a common, everybody takes as much as they are able to. That creates shortages.
Private property creates prosperity.
Every Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for that.
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