I'm in the process of reading a book called "Mayflower" by Nathan Philbrick that covers the first 75 years or so of the Pilgrim's settlement in Massachusetts ending with King Philip's War that was the end of the peaceful coexistence between the settlement and the natives.

In there was one interesting little snigglet.  In the first few years they had incredible difficulty raising enough corn and the like to get them through the winters and practically starved to death.

The first year's problem came from arriving in winter and not having food grains stored.  Indeed, they stole corn from the Indians in their first few weeks, later repaying them.

The big shift, though, that ended their food shortage?  They broke up the lands, moving from communal plantings and giving each family a plot they could till and from which they kept all the proceeds.  Once they switched to a private system, the yields increased dramatically.

Seems prior to that it was only the men who went into the fields.  After that women and children were also out there willingly working on the gardens.  I'm sure some will see this as a sign the pilgrims moved to sweat shop tactics.  I see it more as folks reluctant to put in the extra time when their neighbor was not.  Once ownership became theirs, then they had the added incentive to put the time in.

As the author said, the Pilgrims stumbled onto capitalism rather unknowingly....

No debate, just an observation and an example is all.

Actually, the author is a little left leaning, so for him to give passing acknowledgement to the economics was interesting.  He really has not gotten into too much, and I am half way into the book.  His big thing is the cultural stand off, how there was some harmony and then how it blew up and started the western genocide of the indian cultures.

Some discussion of the economies would be interesting.  Plymouth was a lousy location, with the Boston harbor 30 odd miles to the north far better for commerce, which is why the puritans eclipsed the pilgrims in a scant 30 years or so.

Here's the exact language from page 165...

The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth's debilitating food shortages.  For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally -- the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements.  Bat as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done to increase the annual yield.

In April [Governor] Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew.  The change in attitude was stunning.  Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before.  In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home.  "The women now went willing into the field," Bradford wrote, "and took the little ones with them to set corn."  The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism.  Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.

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Basic economics.  Absent personal incentive folks see no need to rise above the norm as there is no reward for doing so.  Communist economies collapse under their own weight.  China today prospers because it has privatized huge components.

Feel free to argue the opposite if you want.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

See, that's not capitalism, it's sustenance farming.  To clarify, they have property ownership without a market economy, without salaried employment, and apparently without division of labor.

Heh.  It's only capitalism if there's someone to overthrow.

Let's see, Antero, if I tell you the sky is blue, will you argue it is not?


Market Economy:  Trading between themselves and the indians.  Trading for different goods, as in a barter economy.

Salaried Employment:  Barter Economy.  They used the indian currency of wampum when all else failed.

Division of Labor:  Women and children sowed.  Men reaped.  Men built the houses.

It really all fits together with the first examples of economics markets I remember studying as an elective course in 8th grade.  It was an island village that came up with the ideas, but it pretty much follows the way same rudimentary steps outlined in the book.


And Badger?  Go back to casting spells, will you?   

Hmmm... I guess you could create a copy of him, or something?

I do have three boys ...

Oh yeah ... fuck all of you guys.

Even if a rising tide DID lift all boats, what I want to know is, what exactly is motivating that tide to rise and excel? And don't tell me it's moving a trillion gallons of water out of Oceanic pride.