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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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OP
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6 |
Copyright © Townhall.com. All Rights Reserved- Tomorrow, as you celebrate the meal the Pilgrims ate with Indians, pause a moment to thank private property.
I know that seems weird, but before that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because they didn't respect private property.
When they first arrived in Massachusetts, they acted like Bernie Sanders wants us to act. They farmed "collectively." Pilgrims said, "We'll grow food together and divide the harvest equally."
Bad idea. Economists call this the "tragedy of the commons." When everyone works "together," some people don't work very hard.
Likewise, when the crops were ready to eat, some grabbed extra food -- sometimes picking corn at night, before it was fully ready. Teenagers were especially lazy and likely to steal the commune's crops.
Pilgrims almost starved. Governor Bradford wrote in his diary, "So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could ... that they might not still thus languish in misery."
His answer: He divided the commune into parcels and assigned each Pilgrim his own property, or as Bradford put it, "set corn every man for his own particular. ... Assigned every family a parcel of land."
That simple change brought the Pilgrims so much plenty that they could share food with Indians. Bradford wrote that it "made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been."
We see this principle at work all around us today. America is prosperous because private property is mostly respected, and people work hard to protect what they own.
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
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The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7 |
That's always been one of my favorite stories.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 25,004 Likes: 29
brutally Kamphausened 15000+ posts
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brutally Kamphausened 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 25,004 Likes: 29 |
 How did I miss this? If Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, Trump should use this in an ad.
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