Those who still think that it’s a good idea for government to “spread the wealth around” must think they’re “wiser than God.”
That’s what Plymouth Governor William Bradford concluded nearly 400 years ago after one of America’s first socialist experiments led not to shared wealth, but pooled poverty.
The Pilgrims, whom we remember at Thanksgiving, started life in the New World with a system of common ownership forced on them by Plymouth colony investors. That quasi-socialist arrangement proved disastrous, and had to be scrapped for one which gave these first Americans the right to keep the fruits of their labor — and incentive to produce more.
The 104 people who arrived at Plymouth Rock on December 21, 1620, were organized under a charter which imposed a seven-year period of joint ownership. Thus, from the day they arrived in the new world, all clothing, houses, lands, crops, and cash were jointly owned. No matter how hard a man might work, he had little hope of personal gain for his effort.
Unless changed, the charter was an iron-clad guarantee of seven very lean years.
It led to a social order at odds with the dictates of human nature and what 19th century historian James Eggleston called a “sinking of personal interest …, in dissensions and insubordination, in unthrift and famine.”
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