KJP Gets Cornered About Her Hunter Biden Lies
Biden's Hunter Pardon Sends Dems Into Chaos
Comer Points Out Why Biden Really Handed Hunter a Get Out Prison Card
NBC News Reveals the Most Surprising Aspect of Hunter Biden's Pardon
Joe Biden Is a Liar
House Republicans Respond to Biden Pardoning Hunter
American Believed to Have Been Held Hostage by Hamas Was Killed on 10/7,...
'Only in America': Spring Course Offering at the University of Maryland Prompts Widespread...
First Lady Reveals Final Holiday Theme for the Biden White House
'ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East': Trump Has a Warning if...
Jonathan Turley Has a Lot to Say About Hunter Biden's Pardon
Must Watch: Major Companies Going Un-Woke in Viral, New Holiday Season Ads
A Town Was Fined for Refusing to Celebrate ‘Pride Month’
Did You Hear What Some Unhinged Women Are Doing in Response to Trump's...
Slow Suicide of the West: Sick Parade of Pro-Terrorism Ugliness Continues
OPINION

Thanksgiving Lessons

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Thursday, if you eat a nice meal, thank the Pilgrims. They made Thanksgiving possible.

They left the Old World to escape religious persecution. They imagined a new society where everyone worked together and shared everything.

Advertisement

In other words, they dreamed of socialism. Socialism then almost killed them.

As I explain in my weekly video, the Pilgrims attempted collective farming. The whole community decided when and how much to plant, when to harvest and who would do the work.

Gov. William Bradford wrote in his diary that he thought that taking away 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 when they might expect any."

The problem, Bradford realized, was that no one wanted to work. Everyone relied on others to do the work. Some people pretended to be injured. Others stole food.

The communal system, Bradford wrote, "was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment."

Young men complained they had to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any 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 much as young men was "indignity and disrespect."

Women who cooked and cleaned "deemed it a kind of slavery."

Advertisement

The Pilgrims had run into the "tragedy of the commons." No individual Pilgrim owned crops they grew, so no individual had much incentive to work.

Bradford's solution: private property.

He assigned every family a parcel of land so they could grow their own corn. "It made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been," he wrote.

People who had claimed that "weakness and inability" made them unable to work now were eager to work. "Women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn," wrote Bradford.

The Pilgrims learned an important lesson about private property.

Unfortunately, people keep repeating the Pilgrims' mistakes.

Socialism is 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 become a common, to be repaid by all taxpayers.

That would punish people who had long ago paid off their debt.

It would punish people who studied, worked hard, got jobs and were working to pay off college loans.

It would people who went to trade school or no school at all.

Advertisement

It would punish poor people because student loans are mostly held by the relatively rich.

Government granted student loans already create bad incentives:

People who don't like or benefit from college are encouraged to take out loans they can't 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 all that worse.

Fortunately, Biden's student loan forgiveness program ran up against legal challenges. I hope it's dead.

Students should learn from the Pilgrims: take responsibility for your own debt, work hard to pay it off, and don't expect the public to fund your bad decisions.

Bottom line: In a common, everybody takes as much as they can. That creates shortages.

Private property creates prosperity.

Every Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for that.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos