Skip to main content

Thankful for Real Community: A Thanksgiving Lesson

What follows is a true story – actually, two true stories, or the same story that occurred in two different places in very different times and circumstances. Read on to find out where.

They had been discussing amongst themselves in pairs and small groups for months, concerned with their poverty and lack of progress in improving crop yields, so important to feeding themselves and building a thriving community. What they’d been doing, it seemed, should have succeeded. They all worked the same fields together – clearing, tilling, sowing, weeding, and reaping – everyone in the same fields at the same time. Anyone who might be weak in one skill should have had that weakness made up by others working beside them, with everyone benefitting from everyone else’s unique abilities.

They all had a common purpose. But for the occasional troublemaker, present in every community, they liked each other, helped each other, and took care of each other when some among them fell ill. And, everybody got an equal share of the yearly harvest, accounting for family size. But something was amiss. Their harvests were meager, more meager than the farmers knew they should be.

So they were finally all together, in the same room, discussing the problem and deliberating what to do about it. They all agreed it was not a problem of bad soil. Their problem was not a lack of knowledge or a lack of skill. With accusations flying back and forth, they realized that none of them was truly working as hard as he was capable of doing. But why?

Because they got the same share of the yearly output regardless of their personal effort. It was easy to let others do the work and still get a share, but since everybody saw it the same way, nobody was working to their full capabilities.

The solution was simple. They’d divide the fields and work their own plots individually, keeping the gains for themselves.

The next year, the harvest was bountiful, the best, in fact, they’d ever seen. And since most had produced more than they could eat, everybody had more because of trade.
_________________
This story has likely played out many times in many settings for ages, but one instance is especially relevant for Thanksgiving because it involved the Pilgrims, that community of religious zealots who wanted to separate from the Church of England and who founded Plymouth Colony. For three years, they practiced a form of extreme socialism where all work was shared, including household chores where women were assigned to cook communally and wash other families’ clothes. William Bradford, the colony’s repeatedly re-elected governor, described this briefly in his history, based on his diary. He relates no detail concerning their deliberations before they decided to move away from socialism and to free enterprise except to say that,

“after much debate, the Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household… So every family was assigned a parcel of land… This was very successful. It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been… The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Bradford continued:

“The failure of the experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times, — that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For in this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort.”

A year later, Bradford went on describe their circumstances after moving to a free enterprise system:

“But before I come to other things I must say a word about their planting this year. They felt the benefit of their last year’s harvest; for by planting corn on their own account they managed, with a great deal of patience, to overcome famine… The settlers now began to consider corn more precious than silver; and those that had some to spare began to trade with the others for small things, by the quart, pottle, and peck, etc.; for they had not money, and if they had, corn was preferred to it.”
_____________
A continent and an ocean away, 355 years later, the same story played out in a little village in China called Xiaogang. The same communal service, at least in farming, was practiced, imposed by China’s authoritarian Communist Party rather than by idealism. The same meager harvests were suffered. The farmers grumbled and debated for years in the same way. And they knew they were capable of so much more. So one day, after the farmers met and decided to divide the land and farm individually, they wrote a contract.

Unlike the Pilgrims, who were self-governing, Xiaogang’s farmers had to be concerned about what would happen if the Communist government found out they were not farming collectively. So the contract had to be made and signed in secret. Among its agreed provisions was a promise that if any of their number were arrested for rejecting communal farming, the others would raise the arrested man’s children.

The farmers of Xiaogang worked very hard, with renewed enthusiasm, secretly competing with each other to produce the largest yields. When Xiaogang’s harvest broke records for how plentiful it was, Communist authorities knew something was amiss and investigated. But as it happened, Mao Zedong was dead. Deng Xiaoping was in power, and when the contract came to light, instead of being punished, the farmers were held up as an example of a new way for China to proceed. Today, that contract is held in reverence.
____________
These two stories, 355 years and thousands of miles apart, teach us that all humans respond to incentives and are self-interested. Thus, giving everyone equal shares as a way to guarantee security actually results in poverty and insecurity. As William Bradford put it, rather than socialism, “God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them.”

Byron Schlomach is Director of the 1889 Institute and can be reached at bschlomach@1889institute.org.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of 1889 Institute.


*Bradford quotes are from: Bradford, William, Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement; 1608-1650, rendered into modern English by Harold Paget and published in 1909, originally titled Of Plymouth Plantation, reprint by Mantle Ministries: San Antonio, TX, 1988, pp. 115-116, 141-142. For the story of Xiaogang, listen to NPR’s “The Secret Document That Transformed China.”

Popular posts from this blog

Undo 802

Why is it that when conservatives suffer a major loss, they give up, accept the new status quo, and fall back to the next retreat position? When progressives suffer a major loss, they regroup and try again. And again. Until they finally wheedle the American public into giving in. I propose a change in strategy. The Oklahoma Legislature should make undoing State Question 802 its top legislative priority for 2021. This will not be an easy task (legislators seem to prefer avoiding difficult tasks) but it is a critical one. The normal legislative process, with all its pitfalls and traps for the unwary, will only bring the topic to another vote of the people. So why spend so much political capital and effort if the same result is possible? Three reasons.   First is the disastrous consequences of the policy. Forget that it enriches already-rich hospital and pharmaceutical executives. Forget that it gives the state incentives to prioritize the nearly-poor covered by expansion over the des

Licensing Boards Might Violate Federal Law: Regardless, They Are Terrible Policy

Competition is as American as baseball and apple pie. “May the best man win” is a sentiment so old it doesn’t care about your pronouns. The beneficial effects of competition on economic markets are well documented. So why do we let powerful business interests change the rules of the game when they tire of competing in the free market? Most of the time when an occupational license is enacted, it is the members of the regulated industry who push hardest in favor of the license. Honest competition may be fundamentally American, but thwarting that competition through licensing seems to be fundamentally Oklahoman. Oklahoma doesn’t have the most occupational licenses, but when they do license an occupation, the requirements tend to be more onerous than the same license in other states. But what if, instead of merely breaking the rules of fair play to keep out would-be competition, Oklahoma licensing boards are also breaking the law? Normally a concerted effort to lock out competition would v

Cronyism: Feature, Not a Bug, for Used Car Dealer Licensing

Used car dealers in Oklahoma are governed by the Oklahoma Used Motor Vehicle and Parts Commission (UMPV). Like most licensing boards, it is made up of industry insiders. The UMVP's stated mission is to protect consumers from harm, but its structure and history indicate that its primary concern might be protecting licensed dealers from competition. This, of course, is the prime directive of all licensing boards. My recent paper deals with the licensing of used car dealers.   The person hit hardest by this is the hobbyist, especially in times of economic turmoil.   Imagine someone stuck at home due to coronavirus. We'll call him Frank. He can’t work due to the economic shutdown. Unfortunately, Frank’s lack of work does not mean he no longer has to put food on the table for his family. Fortunately for him, he is able to find a good deal on a used car that needs a little work. Frank has all the tools and garage space necessary to fix up the car and isn't violating any quar

The Real Reason Health Care Prices Keep Rising

Much has been made of the healthcare crisis of late, but very little of it addresses two of the biggest financial problems with the system: the third party payer problem and the reality that health insurance bears no resemblance to true insurance.   Insurance is a pooling of risk. The odds are that just over one in every 250 people will contract cancer in the next year. Cancer is an incredibly expensive disease to treat. So if 250 people got together and put aside enough savings to cover one case of cancer between them, they have effectively pooled their risk, and, on average, they should have enough to cover the statistical cancer they as a group are likely to incur. This risk pooling works better in larger numbers. A statistician would be unsurprised if one group of 250 had four cases of cancer while three others had none. But a single group of 10,000 people is much more likely to remain near the nationwide average, and if each of the 10,000 people pays just a little extra,