Thanksgiving, Property Rights, and Redistribution

I normally share this video from Reason every Thanksgiving.

But this year I’m going to recycle instead a video from John Stossel.

The moral of the story is that societies based on collectivism do not succeed.

People don’t work hard when the rewards of their labor go to others. Even in small communities, that approach does not work.

By contrast, they have a much greater incentive to be productive when the benefits accrue to themselves and their families.

In a nutshell, redistributionism does not work. This is why the original Plymouth Colony was failing. And it’s why places such as Cuba today are so miserably poor.

This is a lesson to keep in mind when people on the left or right try to tell you that bigger government is a good idea.

Let’s conclude with some Thanksgiving-themed humor about libertarians.

There  are lots of jokes about a Trump-loving uncle causing discord over turkey, but libertarians have similar abilities.

They even relish the opportunity.

Two more items for our collection.

P.S. This column from the archives shows how politicians might ruin Thanksgiving.

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Happy Libertarian Thanksgiving

Over the years, I’ve shared three videos making the same point about how the first European settlers in America nearly starved because of socialism.

Let’s recycle one of those videos today.

To be sure, starving because of socialism didn’t become a big thing until the 20th century.

So the settlers were ahead of their time, albeit in a bad way.

But at least they gave us another data point showing that it doesn’t make sense to have an economic system that penalizes productivity and subsidizes sloth.

Let’s take a closer look at what happened in the 1600s.

Here’s some of what Helen Raleigh wrote for the Federalist.

Today’s self-identified democratic socialists like to claim real socialism has never been tried in America, but they need to brush up on their history. The Pilgrims did try it — and it failed. …Puritans from the Separatist Church, led by Rev. John Robinson, decided to…secure a land patent in the existing Virginia colony. …The deal stipulated that everything the colonists produced would belong to a “commonwealth,” and at the end of seven years, everything would be equally divided between investors and colonists. …this deal forbade colonists from having any personal time to work on any private business during the seven-year contract term. …Even with the help of the Indians, the colonists had a hard time surviving. Although the word “socialism” hadn’t been invented yet, the Plymouth colony bore many resemblances to a socialist society. Since investors back in England demanded that the colony operate communally, everything was owned by every colonist jointly. No one was allowed to own private land or to work on his private business. The communal social and economic structure proved disastrous. Not all colonists were willing to work hard or at all for the “commonwealth.” …Since not everyone was pulling the same weight, the colony was constantly running out of food, a typical problem in all the socialist countries, from China to Venezuela. …Bradford wisely recognized that a change had to take place…turning the communal property into private property… hardworking and motivated colonists turned Plymouth colony into one of the most successful colonies in North America.

John Stossel authored a piece for Reason on the same sad history.

Tragedy of the Commons nearly killed the Pilgrims. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they started a society based on sharing. Sharing sounds great. But sharing, basically, is collective or communal farming, which is socialism. Food and supplies were distributed based on need. Pilgrims were forbidden to selfishly produce food for themselves. That collective farming was a disaster. When the first harvest came, there wasn’t much food to go around. The Pilgrims nearly starved. Since no individual owned crops from the farm, no one had an incentive to work harder to produce extra that they might sell to others. Since even slackers got food from the communal supply, there was no penalty for not working. …People eager to provide for their families were less eager to provide for others. Bradford wrote, “young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.” …The Pilgrims’ solution: private property. …the collective farm was split up, and every family was given a plot of land. People could grow their own food and keep it or trade it. “It made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” wrote Bradford. “Women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.” The Pilgrims flourished because they turned to private property. So, this Thanksgiving, be grateful for private property, a foundation of capitalism.

Let’s close with some humor.

Libertarians have a reputation for being somewhat dorky and that comes across in this bit of satire from Babylon Bee.

After his state’s governor banned gatherings of more than 10 people for Thanksgiving, local libertarian Paul Figgen was looking forward to boldly defying the government with a massive holiday gathering of dozens. Unfortunately, he’s having a hard time finding dinner guests since no one wants to hang out with him. “I know Thanksgiving was made a federal holiday by the infamous war criminal Abraham Lincoln,” said Figgen, “but I really want to stick it to the Feds and organize a huge dinner and talk about how taxation is theft while smoking weed with a bunch of people! I invited everyone but no one seems to want to hang out for some reason.” …”It’s ok,” Figgen sighed. “If people want to be a bunch of sheep, that’s fine. I’ll just have Thanksgiving with my cardboard cutout of Ron Paul. He loves to hang out with me.”

As a libertarian, I wince when I read this, but I also laughed.

As illustrated by this cartoon, we sometimes have a not-so-endearing tendency to make moralistic arguments at inopportune moments.

The fact that we’re right doesn’t really matter.

P.S. If you like Thanksgiving-themed humor, you can click here and here for some cartoons from the Obama era.

And if you’re not a fan of America’s hypocritical politicians, you’ll like this “self-stuffing turkey.”

Last but not least, I dug into the archives to find this dystopian look at a left-wing Thanksgiving.

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Happy Thanksgiving from America’s Hypocritical Politicians

I’m going to break tradition.

Normally, I use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to explain how the Pilgrims almost starved to death because they initially used a socialist system for farming, but then began to prosper once the colony shifted to a property rights-based approach (the same thing happened at the Jamestown settlement in Virginia as well).

If you want to learn about the failure of socialism in the early 1600s, watch this video from Reason, or these videos from John Stossel and Prager University.

Today’s topic, though, is about Thanksgiving hypocrisy by the political elite.

In his column for the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley excoriates do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do politicians.

…politicians have always believed that they deserve special treatment, that the ordinary rules don’t apply to them. They have pushed for limits on school choice for the poor while sending their own children to private schools. They have advocated for gun control and defunding the police while being protected by armed security guards. …there could be as many as 50 million Thanksgiving travelers this year, only 10% less than in 2019. This is a form of mass civil disobedience like nothing the country has seen since the 1960s. Some of it is born of Covid fatigue, to be sure. But the endless parade of politicians flouting their own rules surely has also played a role. It began shortly after the spring lockdowns and if anything has become more commonplace, even farcical. …There’s a widespread assumption among liberal elites that the rest of us are incapable of calculating risks and taking necessary precautions to ride out the pandemic, and it’s insulting. …The decision of so many millions of Americans to buck public-health warnings, trust their common sense, and spend Thanksgiving with loved ones is a welcome indication that people may be tiring of all this condescension.

Meanwhile, NBC News reports on the two-faced actions of Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver.

Denver’s mayor is explaining himself and offering an apology after he traveled to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, though he had urged others to stay home if possible because of the coronavirus pandemic. …The mayor’s trip comes as officials in Colorado have warned about a steep increase in Covid-19 cases that threatens to stress the hospital system, and after warnings from the governor and others to keep Thanksgiving gatherings small and safe. …The station reported he traveled to Houston for the Mississippi trip, and that his account tweeted the guidance to stay home about 30 minutes before his flight.

Last but not least, Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal is not impressed with the hypocritical behavior of politicians, but he focuses on the big-picture lesson to be learned.

Californians live under some of the tightest Covid-19 restrictions in the nation. So when Gov. Gavin Newsom was recently caught without a mask at a crowded table for 12 at a posh Napa Valley eatery, he instantly became the poster boy for the “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” crowd. …No doubt Thanksgiving will bring fresh examples. While many citizens dutifully inform grandma there’s no room for her at the table because of new Covid-19 restrictions, someone inevitably will be caught enjoying the holiday with dozens of friends and second cousins… And it’s easy to mock these pols for their blatant hypocrisy when they are caught. But maybe the more important lesson to be learned here is that hypocrisy is guaranteed when we impose one-size-fits-all mandates that are rigid and unworkable.

Amen.

I wrote back in May about the two-faced behavior of politicians in the coronavirus era, and nothing has changed in the past six months.

They genuinely think that they should be exempt from all the nonsensical policies that they impose on everyone else.

They’re hypocrites on coronavirus. They’re hypocrites on education. They’re hypocrites on taxes. And they’re hypocrites on global warming.

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Thanksgiving, Socialism, and Free Enterprise

By global standards, the United States is a bulwark of capitalism. Yes, government is too big and there’s far too much intervention, but we have enough private property and free enterprise to be ranked #5 for economic liberty. Which helps to explain why Americans enjoy higher living standards than Europeans.

But capitalism had to be learned. One of the first European settlements in North America, the Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, was based on socialism.

And it was real socialism, with common ownership of the means of production.

Unsurprisingly, it was not a rousing success. Indeed, it was a miserable failure.

Here’s Larry Reed’s analysis of what happened.

We should never forget that the Plymouth colony was headed straight for oblivion under a communal, socialist plan… Land was held in common. Crops were brought to a common storehouse and distributed equally. For two years, every person had to work for everybody else (the community), not for themselves as individuals or families. Did they live happily ever after in this socialist utopia? Hardly. The “common property” approach killed off about half the settlers. Governor Bradford recorded in his diary that everybody was happy to claim their equal share of production, but production only shrank. Slackers showed up late for work in the fields, and the hard workers resented it. …The disincentives of the socialist scheme bred impoverishment and conflict until, facing starvation and extinction, Bradford altered the system. He divided common property into private plots… Communal socialist failure was transformed into private property/capitalist success, something that’s happened so often historically it’s almost monotonous.

And here are some excerpts from a column that Professor Ben Powell wrote back in 2004.

Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did. In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on “equality” and “need” as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. …Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced. Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. …This change, Bradford wrote, “had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. …Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years.

By the way, the settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, also had a very unsuccessful experiment with socialism.

Every Thanksgiving, I like to remind people about America’s failed experiment with big government.

This year, I want to build on that history lesson by looking at how capitalism’s invisible hand is making our modern holidays ever-more affordable.

We’ll start with Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute, who explains how free enterprise makes Thanksgiving possible.

…most of you probably didn’t call your local supermarket ahead of time and order a Thanksgiving turkey this year. Why not? Because you automatically assumed that a turkey would be there when you showed up, and it probably was there when you appeared “unannounced” at your local grocery store and selected your Thanksgiving bird. Or it will be there…when you “skip the trip” to the grocery store and get free 2-hour delivery from Amazon Prime Now… The reason your Thanksgiving turkey was waiting for you without an advance order? Because of the economic concepts of “spontaneous order,” “self-interest,” and the “invisible hand” of the free market. Turkeys appeared in your local grocery stores primarily because of the “self-interest” (greed?) of thousands of turkey farmers, truck drivers, and supermarket owners and employees who are complete strangers to you and your family. But all of those strangers throughout the turkey supply chain co-operated on your behalf and were led by the “invisible hand” to make sure your family had a turkey (or two) on the table to celebrate Thanksgiving.

By the way, just imagine what would happen if a government bureaucracy (like the Department of Agriculture) was in charge of Thanksgiving. Everything would cost more and have lower quality.

And the entire experience would be like a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

But this isn’t just a story about how food appears on store shelves because of market forces rather than central planning.

It’s also a story about the competitive forces of capitalism make that food ever-more affordable. As shown in this chart from Marian Tupy of Human Progress, the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner is dropping over time.

But even that’s not the full story.

We’re also getting richer over time thanks to free enterprise.

So the amount of work that is required to buy Thanksgiving dinner is falling even faster. Here’s a chart from Mark Perry.

Now you know what to be thankful for.

P.S. I embedded a couple of humorous anti-libertarian memes in the column. If you want some more Thanksgiving-themed humor, you can click here and here for some mockery of Obama. And here’s a satirical look at a future Thanksgiving in a nation controlled by our friends on the left.

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Happy Free-Market Thanksgiving

The biggest Thanksgiving tradition in America is a turkey dinner.

Some people also have a secondary tradition of watching football. But libertarians can be a bit quirky, so my secondary tradition has been to periodically share (in 2010, in 2013, and in 2016) a video from Reason about how property rights saved the Pilgrims.

But I don’t like being overly repetitive, so I’m thankful that Reason has a new Thanksgiving video. Narrated by John Stossel, it tells the story of the first Thanksgiving, augmented by a modern example of why communal property creates bad incentives.

And here’s another video with a Thanksgiving theme.

It’s from Prager University and it uses the colonial experience to teach about the failures of mercantilism and collectivism.

It’s no exaggeration to say that capitalism was a life-saver for the Pilgrims.

And it’s a money-saver for us in the modern era, as Mark Perry points out.

The fact that a family in America can celebrate Thanksgiving with a classic turkey feast for less than $50 and at a “time cost” of only 2.21 hours of work at the average hourly wage for one person means that we really have a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving: an abundance of cheap, affordable food. The average worker would earn enough money before their lunch break on just one day to be able to afford the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Compared to 1986, the inflation-adjusted cost of a turkey dinner today is more than 23% cheaper, and 31% cheaper measured in the “time cost” for the average worker. Relative to our income and relative to the cost of food in the past, food in America is more affordable today than almost any time in history.

Remember, also, that these numbers would look even better for consumers if it wasn’t for the heavy burden of government that gets built into the cost of everything.

Let’s close with some libertarian-themed Thanksgiving humor.

Though anti-libertarian-themed would be a better way of describing this cartoon.

Needless to say, libertarians don’t have any objection to voluntary sharing and private redistribution, so the cartoon is wrong.

But it’s nonetheless amusing, so I’ll add it to my collection.

Just like last year’s cartoon about what happens when there’s a libertarian at a family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

P.S. Here are some clever Thanksgiving-themed Obamacare cartoons from 2013. And some Thanksgiving-themed fiscal cartoons from 2012.

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I Suppose We Should Give Thanks that Government Is Not Even Bigger

Our friends at Americans for Tax Reform have calculated that taxes account for nearly 41 percent of the cost of a family’s Thanksviging dinner:

As you finalize your Thanksgiving plans, be sure to reserve a seat at your table for an extra guest: Uncle Sam. Have you ever asked yourself how much of the cost of your Thanksgiving feast is owed to the fact that the government takes a big bite at it in hidden taxes? The Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Center for Fiscal Accountability have calculated just how big that government “tax bite” for Thanksgiving is, and it clocks in at a whopping 40.91 percent. …And that is only if your family does not have to drive or fly to get to the Thanksgiving party, or stay at a hotel for the duration of the festivities, as domestic airfare, gasoline, and hotel stays have their own “tax bites” which are even higher than the bite the government takes out of your Thanksgiving meal, and which we calculated last year.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Could it be, as this National Review post indicates, that the forces of political correctness are now going after Thanksgiving?!? But for what reason? I understand the motive of the anti-religion (as opposed to non-religion) crowd that seeks to marginalize Christmas, but Thanksgiving seems to be a very odd target. My guess, for what it’s worth, is that Thanksgiving symbolizes the American Dream, and that’s not a very PC concept.

But I’m not a PC kind of guy, so I hope everyone enjoys their turkey and is thankful for the things that matter (as one of my softball buddies said, he is thankful for cloture, the 2nd Amendment, and Heidi Klum).

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