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...
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...
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.
There's much more information at the ellipses. Go take a read--after you have a Happy Thanksgiving.
2 comments:
How true - no way to argue with private property.
However, they were also a community and survived and thrived because they lived by John Winthrop's advice:
"We must must bear each others' burdens; we must make others' hardships our own."
Private property, voluntary associations, a sense of community, charity--if I had to align those concepts with one of our major political parties today, I know which one I'd choose.
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