THE WAY I SEE IT
by Don Polson Red
Bluff Daily News 11/20/2012
Pilgrim lessons: collectivism vs. free market
Thanksgiving has inspired two themes over the last six
years: the centrality of faith in God among our forebears, as well as the first
attempts by the Pilgrims to eke out subsistence in unforgiving and harsh
circumstances, including failure and near death. 2006 was a time of relative
abundance, low unemployment and healthy economic growth. However, some
troubling signs called for warnings: schools had little use for inculcating an
understanding, let alone eagerness, to promote and appreciate the vitality of
economic freedom and resulting prosperity; those on the left side of the
spectrum regaled us with their praise for universal, single-payer, collectivist
“Medicare-for-all” health care.
Thanksgiving columns in 2008 and 2010 recognized our
economic difficulties and prompted further warnings that those seeking bigger
governmental solutions were still proclaiming the supposed superiority of
centrally planned, tax-and-spend stimulus. Such policies, which resulted in the
worst economic recovery of nearly all recoveries, are revealed to anyone
without partisan blinders to be utter failures. Those with the wherewithal,
means and ingenuity to start businesses, create jobs and thereby spread true
economic wealth are reluctant for the same reasons that those long ago Pilgrims
almost starved.
The traditional history is
accurate regarding the hardship, sickness and death visited upon the English
settlers at Plymouth during the bitter winter of 1620-21, their struggle to
grow the seeds they brought, and how friendly Indians taught them to plant
corn. This modest harvest, together with fish and game they were fortunate to
acquire from the land, was indeed shared with Indians at a feast proclaimed by
Governor William Bradford after the summer of 1621.
However, history might have
left us without America’s Thanksgiving celebration, if the settlers had not
abandoned collectivism. Though surrounded by nature’s bounty, they would surely
have starved and faded into the mists of oblivion along with the cause of their
demise.
Like many before and after,
the Pilgrims sought a utopian ideal: “From each according to his abilities, to
each according to his need.” Communism, pure and simple, is what the Pilgrims
established with rules that strictly enforced shared ownership and provision of
needs. Their signed agreement said “All profits and benefits that are got by
trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means” were to become
part of “the common stock.”
In addition, “all such
persons as are in this colony are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all
provisions out of the common stock and goods of the colony.” It sounds
appealing and idealistic to have no “private ownership” — everyone works for
everyone’s benefit and no one reaps rewards greater than another’s. But someone
decides what “rewards” each one “needs.” Harder work gains nothing.
Governor Bradford wrote about the predictable
results, as the system “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and
retard much employment. (DP: sound relevant?) For the young men that were most
fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and
strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.
“Attitudes declined as the
strong, for their greater work, received no more than the weak, and wives found
themselves resentful over working, essentially, for other men’s wives,
regarding it as tantamount to slavery.” Crops, without which they would no
doubt starve, were not only inefficiently produced, but “much was stolen both
by night and day,” Bradford wrote of the 1622 harvest. (DP: like those who
prefer benefits over work?)
Unlike more recent
totalitarian communism, they were free to change their course so in the spring
of 1623 they tried…capitalism! “And so assigned to every family a parcel of
land … This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so
as much more corn was planted than otherwise ….” The acreage planted, and
harvested, increased seven-fold from 1621 to 1623. Bradford wrote of that next
harvest that “instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of
things was changed to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they
blessed God” and shared with their Native American neighbors.
No one would have remembered
that first Thanksgiving if the colony, tethered to a failing economic model of
depending on everyone’s labor to provide for everyone’s needs, had starved and
faded into historical oblivion. The feast of abundance that they shared remains
testimony to the superiority and efficiency of private enterprise to provide
for individual needs. (With credit and thanks to Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe,
2002, and economist Judd W. Patton, Bellevue University)
The Pilgrim lessons we need
to remember and pass on to children are simple but profound: Thank God for our
abundance, share it, and acknowledge infallible economic principles, learned
through hardship by those early settlers.
“A democracy is always
temporary in nature … and will continue to exist up until the time that voters
discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise
the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every
democracy … is always followed by a dictatorship.” (Alexander Tyler, 1787) “If
the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident
that it will destroy the city.” (Aristotle)
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