Owning land boosts the economy more than you think. Renters are not producing anything for themselves, but are using someone else’s property and paying them, that means that one of the two is increasing and the other is not, generally speaking. When looking at the Mayflower Company and Plymouth Colony, you know they struggled that first year, but did you know they literally struggled to stay alive for their first three years? The Indians helped them out, in fact, I would not be surprised if Squanto had not been a godsend to them. He knew the English language well after having been taken captive by a Spaniard and taken to Spain where he escaped and traveled to and lived in England before he came back to his native land. He knew the language, the English customs, the religion, the food, and everything one could know about the English culture. When he returned home, he discovered that the plague had killed off all his people, leaving him the only survivor of his tribe.
In the first three years of living at Plymouth, the hardships multiplied: deaths, starvation, extreme temperatures, illnesses, Indian raids, etc. Although the government had been set up before they set foot on land, some of the principles were against a good economic system. They had settled on a common land approach and were headed for oblivion as all nations do when they embrace a communal, socialist plan.
In the diary of William Bradford, we discover that land was held in common, crops were brought to a common storehouse and equally distributed to all. For the first two years, every person was required to work for everybody else, the community, rather than for themselves as individuals or family. Did William Bradford’s company live happily ever after in their socialist utopia? The answer is no. The Plymouth colony could not lift themselves out of the dire poverty and starvation. The “common property” approach took the lives of half the settlers. Governor Bradford recorded in his diary that everyone was happy to claim their share in the harvests and production, but production shrank. In other words, the produce that was brought into the storehouses continued to decrease. In this instance, there were shirkers and slackers who would show up late while the hard workers began to resent them. Contempt and resentment grew and production declined.
The disincentives of the socialist scheme bred starvation, destitution, and conflict until Bradford altered the system and divided up the land and gave each family a one-acre plot to do with as they wished. The new owners produced whatever they desired and then kept or traded freely with others. The result was a tremendous increase in prosperity.
As our nation’s students are seeking learning from the various schools, public and private, they are susceptible to the ubiquitous notion that socialism is the answer to our problem of poverty. Where will they find other solutions to the problem? Almost nowhere in our present homogenous system will they find the right answers. Socialism is a trendy fascination right now. Sharing the wealth with everyone and having everything in common looks desirable, and yet it is one of the most dangerous ideas. We do not have to go far into our past to see that socialism created oblivion and devastation in Russia and China. No, the answer lies further in our past, in the story of William Bradford and later in the Founding Father’s writings. Can there be any doubt in anyone’s mind after studying the history of these United States that private property and laws protecting it have created the vast wealth?
I believe it was divine intervention that motivated them to adopted a very different system which was the birth of the most powerful economic system, a system I would call the abundance miracle. At this time of thanksgiving, I lift my prayer of deep gratitude to the Lord for private property and the knowledge of natural rights, natural laws that protect it, and also sincere gratitude for the profit motive that has made abundance possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment