Don’t know much about history

Alex Tabarrok reminds us what really happened at the first Thanksgiving:

It’s one of the ironies of American history that when the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth rock they promptly set about creating a communist society.  Of course, they were soon starving to death.

Fortunately, “after much debate of things,” Governor William Bradford ended corn collectivism, decreeing that each family should keep the corn that it produced.

So America quickly moved away from an economic system based on sharing equally, where there is no incentive to work.  Unfortunately peasants in Russia, China, Cambodia, and North Korea were not so lucky.  With no incentive to produce, farm output plummeted and tens of millions starved to death.  Collectivization of agriculture was (along with WWII) one of the two great tragedies of the 20th century.

Like many “progressives,” Paul Krugman seems to think fear of  socialism is a big joke.

Here’s how it went down: a bunch of people got together, with each group bringing what it could “” the Wampanoag brought deer, the Pilgrims apparently shot some birds, etc.. Then everyone shared equally in the feast “” regardless of how much they brought to the table. Socialism!

Worse yet, many of the lucky duckies benefiting from the largesse of this 17th-century welfare state were illegal immigrants. (That would be the Pilgrims).

We need to stop celebrating this deeply un-American event, and start celebrating something more in tune with the things that make America great, such as the Ludlow Massacre.

In fairness, Krugman probably doesn’t understand what actually happened at Plymouth.  He certainly doesn’t favor an extreme form of socialism where there’s zero incentive to produce.  But if you want to mock conservatives for believing that an economic system based on sharing could leads to all sorts of unspeakable evils, you might want to pick an example that doesn’t prove their point.

PS.  Read Tabarrok’s entire post.  It’s excellent.


Tags:

 
 
 

77 Responses to “Don’t know much about history”

  1. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 06:13

    FatWallet / Slickdeals (collective deal architecting) is a nice improvement on capitalism.

    But hippies never see that as a compliment.

  2. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 06:15

    Also, Scott please add YouTube video ads to the bottom of your posts.

  3. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    25. November 2011 at 06:44

    Morgan, I have a contract with a company that handles my ads, I’m not involved.

  4. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 06:52

    Like all of the best libertarians, Alex Tabarrok sees only the aspects of history that he wants to see.

    Here’s what I see from this piece of history:

    Benevolent dictatorship sadly outperformed democracy.

    Tabarrok also selectively chooses his cases. The corn rules had no more relationship to the Thanksgiving event than the great sickness. Tell me Scott, what libertarian lessons would Tabarrok offer us about this episode:

    https://www.westshore.edu/personal/MWNagle/US1/NativeAmerDocs/Bradford-sickness.htm

    I wonder if the Wampanoag or other tribes would agree with Tabarrok’s usual position that externalities are overrated.

  5. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 06:59

    One more piece of Tabarrokian idiocy:

    The change to the corn rules DID NOT HAPPEN till 1623. The first thanksgiving was Fall 1621.

    Many libertarians note something like the following about the corn rules:

    “Governor Bradford, along with other leaders, believed that this system was the most efficient and fair distribution of resources. Each member of the colony would farm a plot of land and give all of his harvest to the common storehouse where it would then be redistributed as needed.

    But this strategy was a disaster, resulting in food shortages and widespread hunger. In fact, just 50 of the 102 original settlers survived past the first winter in 1620 due to hunger and disease.”

    Why is this pathetically self-serving? Because the DEATHS IN 1620 had NOTHING TO DO with the corn rules. Notably, the Mayflower landed in November 1620 – there was no “planting” before the first winter. Indeed, there was only the erection of structures for defense and shelter. Sickness (notably scurvy and other sicknesses) struck in February through April, killing nearly half of the pilgrims.

    During that time, it was indeed the “collectivism” that permitted the following:

    “During the epidemic, there were only a small number of men who remained healthy and bore the responsibility of caring for the sick. One of these was Captain Myles Standish, a soldier who had been hired by the settlers to coordinate the defense of the colony. Standish cared for Bradford during his illness and this was the beginning of a bond of friendship between the two men.”

  6. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 07:02

    Oh, and one FINAL piece of total Tabarrokian lunacy:

    Any guess how the pilgrims learned to cultivate corn?

    November 1620 – pilgrims land, start building structures
    February-April 1621 – pilgrims die in droves from sickness
    ????? something happens
    November 1621 – pilgrims celebrate thanksgiving

    1623 – Bradford changes the corn collectivism rule

  7. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 07:08

    Statsguy,

    “Caring for” is something people do. Being forced to care for is the collectivist nightmare.

    All advantages of unforced care flow to the libertarian argument. Every single time.

  8. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 07:23

    Morgan:

    “Being forced to care for is the collectivist nightmare.”

    You just selectively defined the world collectivism. Here’s the primary definition:

    “The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.”

    Caring for others at risk of one’s own life is collectivist. The same is true with fighting in a military unit.

    Alternatively, let’s talk about the always-beneficial invisible hand that Tabarrok loves so dearly. Here’s how the invisible hand benefited the Pilgrim trade partners:

    “This spring also, these Indians that lived about their trading house there, fell sick of the small pox and died most miserably; for a sorer disease cannot befall them, they fear it more than the plague. For usually they that have this disease have them in abundance, and for want of bedding and linen and other helps they fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold. And then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep. The condition of this people was so lamentable and they fell down so generally of this disease as they were in the end not able to help one another, no not to make a fire nor to fetch a little water to drink, nor any to bury the dead. But would strive as long as they could, and when they could procure no other means to make fire, they would burn the wooden trays and dishes they ate their meat in, and their very bows and arrows. And some would crawl out on all fours to get a little water, and sometimes die by the way and not be able to get in again.”

  9. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    25. November 2011 at 07:29

    Statsguy, You are attacking a straw man with the disease example. I am sure Tabarrok would agree that the settlers brought small pox to the natives.

    And even if you are right that the example cited by Bradford was off by a year or two, that has no bearing on his claim that communism failed and that they needed to revert to private enterprise. Or do you think he just made that up? Given that we know that similar attempts in the 20th century almost invariably led to tyranny and mass starvation, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Indeed I’d say he was remarkably prophetic.

  10. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    25. November 2011 at 07:32

    Statsguy: compassion is not collectivism. In political usage and practice, collectivism has a clear implication of being forced to give priority to the group. This is particularly true in collectivised agriculture, for example. The most collectivised polities are also the most tyrannical: this is not some weird accident.

  11. Gravatar of Vincent Vincent
    25. November 2011 at 07:44

    is this some kind of second-degree lesson where you demonstrate how silly it is to make strawman arguments, by making your own?

    communism doesn’t work! wow, who knew?

  12. Gravatar of Ignacio Ignacio
    25. November 2011 at 07:46

    Socialism is when the State takes your production by force nad decides how to distribute it with it others, not when you take what you produce and choose if and how to share it with others voluntarily. Unless the natives where forced to share with the Pilgrims, Prof. Krugman is mistaken to call the first Thanksgiving socialism.

  13. Gravatar of david david
    25. November 2011 at 07:53

    Modern libertarianism in its property-focused form distinguishable from liberalism only makes sense in societies where the use of coercion can be monopolized by a state; where, indeed, so many responsibilities can be claimed by a state until the notion of a minimal state, i.e., minarchism makes sense.

    Colonial America hardly fits this description given the absence of any state or culture of law that could enforce contracts or claims to property. Otherwise the colonists would have been expelled for appropriating Indian territory, for instance…

    Recall that modern society has plentiful organizations which are directed from a central committee, whose returns are often divided in a way that is at best only loosely related to individual marginal product, and who enforce this system by calling a mass of armed men to punish violators. We call these organizations “businesses”. The reason these work nonetheless is due to the political economy outside these organizations, not the system of incentives within the organization themselves.

    The Plymouth colonists did not appear ex nihilo; they signed up for the trip. And they could easily have left the colony (and died in the cold, but nobody owed them a fine planting summer). So, freedom of entry, and freedom of exit. It is about as sensible to describe their choice of organization as ‘communism’ as describing a business venture as communist.

  14. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    25. November 2011 at 08:02

    “But if you want to mock conservatives for believing that an economic system based on sharing could leads to all sorts of unspeakable evils, you might want to pick an example that doesn’t prove their point.”

    I guess the problem is that few are advocating for such a collectivist system. But what people are agitating for is lumped in with groups responsible for atrocities. The same could easily be said about capitalism, see the Irish genocide.

  15. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 08:03

    Scott:

    “even if you are right that the example cited by Bradford was off by a year or two”

    What do you mean even if I am right? Are you suggesting that recorded history is wrong?

    Tabarrok heads up his post:

    “Here from 2004 is my post on the lessons of the first thanksgiving.”

    HOW THE HECK WAS the 1623 corn rule a “lesson on the first thanksgiving”????

    IT HAD NO RELATIONSHIP TO THE FIRST THANKSGIVING AT ALL.

    The Corn Rule happened TWO YEARS LATER.

    Tabarrok is indulging in total ideological reconstructivism.

    And you are defending him, Scott. Take your blinders off.

  16. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 08:06

    It occurrs to me that this post was avery subtle joke. In so far as the title:

    “Don’t know much about history”

    was a direct reference to Mr. Tabarrok himself.

  17. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 08:19

    Lorenzo, everything you say is true – I’m not defending collectivist national regimes.

    Tabarrok builds a straw man. Reality is more complicated.

    David’s post above is a better representation of truth, but people don’t like complexity.

    I don’t actually disagree with (most of) Tabarrok’s conclusion. I do object to Tabarrok’s complete fabrication of historical timelines to make his point.

  18. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    25. November 2011 at 08:35

    Also Tabarrok isn’t much of a thinker. His posts are usually invectives devoid of substance designed to illicit an emotional response from the reader (troll). Tyler is the real thinker of that blog, and all the substantitive posts are by him.

  19. Gravatar of Thanksgiving Lessons — Marginal Revolution Thanksgiving Lessons — Marginal Revolution
    25. November 2011 at 08:45

    […] Addendum: Scott Sumner comments. […]

  20. Gravatar of John Bennett John Bennett
    25. November 2011 at 08:50

    It wasn’t communism that killed production and the peasants in Russia. It was Stalin who deliberately murdered millions, by for example, shipping the grain supplies abroad to earn foreign exchange. See Bloodlands and The Forsaken, two contemporary studies, but there are many others.

  21. Gravatar of Tom Tom
    25. November 2011 at 09:00

    Great post, Scott!

    Since most native Americans didn’t believe in private land ownership, they didn’t consider themselves owners of the land — there was no violation of their laws, no “illegal immigration”.

    Without studying the details, I do have the strong feeling that there were many treaties the whites made with Indians which were later violated by the whites, although often with some provocation.

    On disease, the 1500s with the Spanish were the bringers of huge amounts of diseases which maybe wiped out hundreds of thousands of Indian settlements throughout the southern river valleys. (Perhaps this from Guns, Germs, and Steel)

    The introduction of diseases on a nomadic, completely non-resistant peoples was inevitably going to be catastrophic without post-Pasteur medicine and hygiene. Disease death was a tragedy without guilt for the whites, unlike the anti-capitalist Communist/ collectivist Killing Fields of the post-Vietnam War 70s which America had been actively fighting against.

    [I don’t recall from Gov Bradford’s accounts whether there were celebrations in 1621 or not, there certainly was not a good local harvest until 1623. I should check, but feel lazy now … it’s no holiday in Slovakia.]

  22. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 09:04

    Statsguy,

    Lorenzo was correcting you on your response to my argument, and then you agreed with him.

    FORCE / REQUIREMENT is the operable issue. For you to be logically valid, it MUST be part of your example.

    As I said, anytime people give and are not forced, it proves the libertarian case. All charity, even tithing proves the libertarian case.

    If you try to argue around it, squirrel in the debate, it makes you look silly.

  23. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 09:06

    Tom, I have no problem with war, it is the libertarian out. If a nation makes war and takes land to be distributed amongst its people, that means the prior state didn’t invest enough in defense.

    “Invest enough” comes to mean takes good enough care of the people that the invaders are not welcomed with open arms.

    Libertarians are not pacifists.

  24. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 09:19

    Morgan:

    “As I said, anytime people give and are not forced, it proves the libertarian case.”

    By that logic, the pilgrims were not collectivist – in so far as they freely chose to participate in that system. UNLIKE the chinese or russian peasants, they WERE given an opportunity out. When the Mayflower ventured back to England in 1921, each was given an opportunity to return with it, and they all remained.

    One might observe that the “private property based” system in England at that time was far more tyrannical than the “collectivist” system in 1621 in Plymouth. And England was one of the most free of all the continental governments.

    @ Benny lava

    Yes, Tyler Cowen posts are almost always solid. I don’t bother to read much from Tabarrok – every time Scott links to something from Tabarrok it’s invariably lower quality than Scott’s usual stuff.

  25. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 09:55

    Stats, hippie commune are fine, none of them prove your case for a state.

    You are dancing around the very modern discussion being had here – the state’s power, where it is not enforcing private property rights / contracts, is almost always a negative,

  26. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    25. November 2011 at 10:32

    Vincent, It was Krugman that praised the Pilgrim’s system of sharing, not me. I’m afraid you missed the entire point of my post, which in basically the final sentence.

    david, It was certainly far more communist than the system that replaced it in 1623, although I won’t debate your point on the terminology. Of course that has no bearing at all on my post, only Tabarrok’s.

    My point was that when you collective agriculture and share the wealth, output usually plummets and people starve. That point stands. That was a reply to Krugman, not Tabarrok.

    Benny, You said;

    “I guess the problem is that few are advocating for such a collectivist system. But what people are agitating for is lumped in with groups responsible for atrocities. The same could easily be said about capitalism, see the Irish genocide.”

    And doesn’t that prove my point? A right-winger would be pretty foolish to mock left wing critic of capitalism who cited Ireland circa 1845, and left-wingers are pretty foolish to mock anti-socialists by pointing to the Pilgrims.

    BTW, It may “go without saying,” but I said it anyway, so no one can accuse me of distorted Krugman’s views. He’s no socialist and I said that.

    I’d also point out that the Irish famine may have represented “capitalism,” depending on how you define the term, but certainly not libertarianism.

    And finally, it was Krugman that raised the issue, not me. He ought to get his facts straight before mocking the ignorance of conservatives. But we know he doesn’t read conservative blogs, he’s told us so. So no matter how many times I correct him on mistakes, he keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

    John, Both communism and the export of grain killed the peasants. But the export of grain was itself part of communism. He took grain from the peasants by force. I’ve read Harvest of Shame so I know full well what happened. BTW, the Chinese famine was almost 10 times worse, and mostly due to falling output.

    Statsguy, You seem to think it’s important that he was off by two years, even if right on substance. But I can’t imagine why. Suppose all of Christianity was 100% correct except Jesus was born in year three instead of year one, would that discredit Christianity in your view?

    The key point is that the Pilgrims started out with collectivized agriculture. It led to food shortages and discord, and they switched to private property. Is that right, or not? If it’s right how do we interpret Krugman’s post mocking conservatives for opposing the sharing of food and using the early Pilgrims as an example? I’d say Krugman looks pretty foolish.

  27. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    25. November 2011 at 11:18

    “I’d also point out that the Irish famine may have represented “capitalism,” depending on how you define the term, but certainly not libertarianism.”

    1. Isn’t laissez faire synonymous with libertarianism?

    2. Did I mention libertarianism?

    “He’s no socialist and I said that.”

    These days that doesn’t go without saying, I’ve heard him called a socialist and communist before. Thanks for clarifying.

  28. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    25. November 2011 at 11:19

    Not only doesn’t Krugman read conservative blogs he doesn’t appear to have read The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

  29. Gravatar of Cassander Cassander
    25. November 2011 at 11:34

    David> Every business has the same central planning problem as a platonic central planner. The reason capitalism still works is that there are lots of businesses, and the ones that guess wrong don’t make any money and go out of business. The same cannot be said of the socialistic central planner.

  30. Gravatar of Mitt Mitt
    25. November 2011 at 12:09

    “I’d also point out that the Irish famine may have represented “capitalism,” depending on how you define the term, but certainly not libertarianism.”

    Sure it isn’t, Scott. Many Marxists have trouble seeing the connection between how their favorite pet theory works in their head and the gulag as well.

  31. Gravatar of Ted M Ted M
    25. November 2011 at 12:11

    Scott,

    StatsGuy is not worked up about the year – he’s worked up about causality.

    It’s like saying that the tens of millions of deaths in China from famine happened from 1955-8, instead of of ’58-61; if that were the case, the deaths would not be attributable to collectivism.

    In other words, the propaganda of tying a celebration of plenty to property rights is unjustified, that’s all.

    At least, that’s how I understood it, but please anybody involved correct me if I’m wrong.

  32. Gravatar of W. Peden W. Peden
    25. November 2011 at 12:16

    Mitt,

    Neither the Poor Law nor Gulags are part of the canons of libertarianism or Marxism respectively. Therefore, neither can be representative of these ideologies, EVEN IF it is the case they were inevitable consequences in some way or other.

    The claim that such horrors were consequences of such ideologies is a different argument.

  33. Gravatar of W. Peden W. Peden
    25. November 2011 at 12:20

    Cassander,

    Planning and calcuation in a market economy doesn’t just take place at the level of the business. It also takes place at the individual level, the government level and at the level of the non-business association.

  34. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 12:51

    Scott:

    “You seem to think it’s important that he was off by two years, even if right on substance. But I can’t imagine why”

    Uh, yah, it’s important.

    Tabarrok is arguing that private property made the first thanksgiving possible after they nearly starved to death due to collectivism. Except private property came in 1623, and the first thanksgiving (celebrating their good fortune from the harvest of that summer/fall) came in 1621. There’s this little matter of 2 years separating cause and effect. Nor did the starvation in the winter of 1620 have anything to do with failure to harvest enough corn in the summer of 1620. They summer of 1620 was ON THE FRICKIN SHIP. And they DIDN’T PLANT ANYTHING THAT YEAR. In fact, they didn’t even KNOW ABOUT CORN that year.

    Overall, it’s yet another goal-seeked Tabarrok make believe story. He is either flat out lying, or didn’t bother to check his history at all. Except that he thought his 2004 post was so smart, he had to repost it – twice the fool.

    The first thanksgiving has NOTHING TO DO with his little moral tale. Zilch. Nada. You can agree or disagree with Krugman about the 1621 thanksgiving being a collectivist event, but Tabarrok is making up history out of whole cloth.

  35. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    25. November 2011 at 13:27

    “Tabarrok is making up history out of whole cloth.”

    StatsGuy,

    I think that what Tabarrok was doing was trying to make a moral argument. Collectivism is bad and the results are always bad. Famine in the early Pilgrim community at Plymouth Rock. Mass starvation of the Great Leap forward under Chairman Mao. That his facts weren’t correct was probably of no consequence to him. To the moralizer they rarely are. Which is why even if you pointed these errors out to him in person he would not care. Because he is making an argument that makes him feel good. Your argument makes him feel bad. Therefore he will disregard the one that makes him feel bad and embrace the one that feels good.

    So I’d not waste so much time and effort on this quixotic quest. I don’t want to waste time lecturing Scott on the history of the Irish genocide because I know that he won’t listen, no matter how many scholarly articles I dig up he will dismiss them. That’s just how people are.

  36. Gravatar of TylerG TylerG
    25. November 2011 at 13:28

    StatsGuy,

    Are you really going to crucify Trabarrok for ‘ideological reconstructivism’ when just before him Krugman just tried to pass of an act of voluntary giving as socialism? …Really?

  37. Gravatar of Mitt Mitt
    25. November 2011 at 13:29

    W. Peden,

    If we’re talking about the idea’s in the respective theories canon I certainly agree with you, but I was just having a bit of fun with Scott since he brought up the forced collectivization of the Ukraine and compared it to people voluntarily setting up a system before realizing it was ‘inefficient’ (and before the objection; I do know he thinks they are different).

    Of course talking about the idea’s in the context of their own canon is a bit of a non-starter if we’re discussing how these ideologies actually work in the real world (and I’m not picking on Libertarians- I point out the same thing to Social Democrats, Marxists, etc.). Scott was the one who brought up how poorly collectivized agriculture has worked in practice.

    As for the second bit, I obviously do believe discussing the impact that these ideologies have had in reality is worthwhile, but right now I’m just politely (I hope that came across) jabbing at Scott. I actually agree with him on the tone of Krugman’s post, as well as his often arrogant dismissal of anyone right of center, and certainly am likely to agree with Scott agree on Communism in practice.

  38. Gravatar of Charlie Charlie
    25. November 2011 at 14:11

    It sounds like you are mostly agreeing with Krugman. We shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving; Thanksgiving is unamerican.

    Obviously, he’s making the argument in farce and you are making it seriously. I think he is making it in farce to point out that conservatives are hypocrites. They should be outwardly hostile to the Thanksgiving story. You aren’t guilty of that; you are arguing that conservatives should be hostile to the Thanksgiving story, so overall, you and PK are in agreement.

  39. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    25. November 2011 at 14:22

    ‘They summer of 1620 was ON THE FRICKIN SHIP. And they DIDN’T PLANT ANYTHING THAT YEAR. In fact, they didn’t even KNOW ABOUT CORN that year.

    ‘….Tabarrok is making up history out of whole cloth.’

    You might want to be a little more careful about charging people with making things up, Stats Guy. There are plenty of references to corn in ‘Mount’s Relation’ in 1620:

    http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/mourt1.html

    The first of which being for November 16th: ‘…And as we went in another valley we found a fine clear pond of fresh water, being about a musket shot broad and twice as long. There grew also many fine vines, and fowl and deer haunted there; there grew much sassafras. From thence we went on, and found much plain ground, about fifty acres, fit for plow, and some signs where the Indians had formerly planted their corn.’

    Many other such references follow. Nor is it clear that a year later was the date of ‘the first Thanksgiving’. There was some kind of party at that time:

    http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/mourt6.html

    ‘Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.’

    But, the date of the Bradford proclamation of the first Thanksgiving seems to be 1623.

    Though Bradford wrote his history of Plymouth Plantation over a period of years beginning in 1630, so it may not be accurate.

  40. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 14:47

    TylerG:

    Yes, I will happily crucify both of them – I don’t see how Krugman’s sermonizing reification of the thanksgiving tale justifies Tabarrok’s equally self-serving re-write of history. Scott, however, did not repost and praise Krugman.

  41. Gravatar of Shane Shane
    25. November 2011 at 16:24

    It’s not clear to me that socialism/communism/collectivism has anything to do with the famines under Mao/Stalin/Kim Jong Il. The urban elite just imposed punitive grain taxes/confiscatory regimes on the peasants, whom they regarded as reactionary and anti-communist. We could easily impose a 100 grain tax on farmers without fundamentally changing our property relations–it would produce similar effects. Just being a jerk to people and stealing from people doesn’t have anything to do with collectivism in the truest sense (like we find in religious communities, kibitzes, etc.)

    As for real collectivism, Prof. Sumner, it seems to me that there’s actually a really interesting question about high-trust v. low-trust embedded here. Collectivism, we know, actually does work in very tight-knit societies, such as Mennonites, etc. Furthermore, collectivism is a very accurate way of looking at the world: wealth does not exist outside of society (true hermits always live in poverty). Finally, individualism imposes all sorts of costs on society–security guards, cashiers, payment mechanisms. If people just took what they needed and paid what they could (“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”) things would be more efficient. We’ve all been to the store when we had the correct amount of change in our pocket and knew exactly what we wanted, but still had to wait in line for 45 minutes to hand some cashier a few bucks rather than just being able to drop it in a bucket. A little more collectivism–like in the trip to Michigan described by Prof. Sumner awhile back–would eliminate this. Collectivist societies also don’t suffer recessions–everyone just keeps saying “I will work harder!” like Boxer in _Animal Farm_.

    Of course, the problem is that in collectivism, it is easy to free ride. The death spiral of collectivism actually has an interesting game theory element (I’d love to see someone who knows it better than me work this out). If people expect that everyone else will play by the rules and contribute what they are capable of producing, then they too will contribute to the collective pot, which will increase the productivity of the economy. If their commitment to trust, and the benefits it produces, is higher than the benefits from free-riding, then most people will trust rather than free-ride. But what makes the former more beneficial than the latter? That’s an incredibly complicated question that involves a lot of difficult to quantify elements.

    Because this question is so hard to answer, we recognize that we can’t actually produce true collectivist societies–even if everyone could be expected to behave virtuously at a collectivist store without cashiers and only take “what they need,” they may misjudge their needs. But maybe we can produce approximations? A price system would at the very least cause them to be more efficient in satisfying those needs. So we can still be collectivists while adding in “realistic” compromises like a price system. While we’re at it, we could add in a few more “checks” to help manage the system rationally: we tax capitalist organizations (those that require you to pay for what you take) and subsidize collectivist ones (like NPR, where you can take as much as you want and people are just expected to be mature enough to contribute their fair share). We could then create mechanisms to balance out the negative effects of these safety mechanisms themselves: we add in taxes on consumption, pollution, and harmful behaviors to fund transfers to those who don’t make enough money. We end up with a society that looks pretty dang collectivist without the possibility for a free-rider induced death spiral. We might call it “actually existing utopia.”

    Shouldn’t we be talking about how to get there–other than by buying a ticket to Copenhagen–rather than engaging in collectivism v. libertarianism debates? We have Glen Beck for that.

  42. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 16:36

    Patrick, in 1620 the word ‘corn’ in England was used to refer to all cereal grains. Chiefly, when an Englishman said corn, he meant wheat.

    http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron212/readings/corn_history.htm

    I concede, however, that it is possible the pilgrims knew about corn since it was cultivated in southern europe by the 1600s.

  43. Gravatar of Becky Hargrove Becky Hargrove
    25. November 2011 at 16:40

    I really didn’t want to say this but…did you guys eat too much pie yesterday?

  44. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 16:45

    Patrick, further:

    On the date of the first thanksgiving, most sources consider it 1621. I can’t cite more than one website without hitting the filter, so here’s the wikipedia excerpt:

    “The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. In later years, the tradition was continued by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford who planned a thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623.[12][13][14]”

    The first event was 1621 – apparently prompted by a good harvest (2 years before private property was instituted).

    Also:

    http://www.pilgrimhall.org/f_thanks.htm

  45. Gravatar of Becky Hargrove Becky Hargrove
    25. November 2011 at 16:45

    P.S. I hope the relatives fared a bit better!

  46. Gravatar of Peter N Peter N
    25. November 2011 at 17:06

    I think Krugman is just tired of people on the right calling anything they don’t like socialist, including, especially, himself. There are other and more accurate ways to describe policies you believe are dangerous or misguided.

    Case in point, calling Obama a socialist. This is ridiculous. Now if people want to call his administration’s policies corporatocacy, I’d have to work pretty hard to argue against them (bank bailouts, healthcare giveaways to the insurance industry, though to be fair Bush set a precedent with a giveaway to the drug companies).

    Can’t we have some variety in our invective?

  47. Gravatar of Peter N Peter N
    25. November 2011 at 17:22

    Perhaps it might be both more interesting and more profitable to discuss this from Felix Salmon at Reuters.com. If there’s any more important current economic issue, I don’t know what it is.

    “And as for banks’ non-sovereign assets, good luck with selling those. The shadow banking sector knows exactly what happens to asset prices when sellers put €5 trillion of those assets on the market at once, and there’s literally no one out there who would dream of buying such things at or near par.

    In every crisis there’s a point of no return “” if you don’t do XYZ in time, it’s too late, and the crisis is certain to get out of anybody’s control. I’m increasingly convinced we’ve already passed that point of no return in Europe. The banks won’t lend to each other, the Germans won’t do Eurobonds, and the ECB won’t act as a lender of last resort. The confidence fairy has left the continent, and she isn’t about to return. Which means, as we used to say in 2008, that things are going to get worse before they get worse.”

    If the confidence fairy has left the continent, who stuffs the 5 trillion Euros under its pillow?

  48. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 18:05

    Shane, you are at least smart enough to think through high and low trust, but the POINT is the system you and Benny and Stats (who STILL hasn’t admitted he flubbed his argument with me above) loses because…

    libertarianism exists to EXPECT low trust, and be pleasantly surprised when high trust occurs.

    which is far more rational then EXPECTING high trust and being screwed when it doesn’t happen.

    And even then, the Swedish here in the states outperform Sweden.

    Point. Set. Match.

    (happy dance)

    Becky, at my Turkey table these guys would sit silent and glum.

  49. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    25. November 2011 at 18:27

    ‘Patrick, in 1620 the word ‘corn’ in England was used to refer to all cereal grains. Chiefly, when an Englishman said corn, he meant wheat.’

    Had you clicked on my link, you’d have not made that mistake:

    ‘We went on further and found new stubble, of which they had gotten corn this year, and many walnut trees full of nuts, and great store of strawberries, and some vines. …also we found a great kettle which had been some ship’s kettle and brought out of Europe. …and in it we found a little old basket full of fair Indian corn, and digged further and found a fine great new basket full of very fair corn of this year, with some thirty-six goodly ears of corn, some yellow, some red, and others mixed with blue, which was a very goodly sight.’

    ‘The first event was 1621 – apparently prompted by a good harvest (2 years before private property was instituted).’

    Autumn festivals to celebrate the harvest were a longstanding tradition. What Tabarrock quotes from Bradford comes from the 1623 section of his history.

  50. Gravatar of Shane Shane
    25. November 2011 at 18:34

    Actually, Morgan, I don’t disagree with you on point 1: that we should first expect low trust but hope for high trust. Where I perhaps differ is that 2. I believe that public policy should design incentives that bias outcomes toward high trust behavior. 3. I would call this not libertarianism but rather market communism–the use of pragmatic, efficient incentive structures that produce collectivist-communist outcomes using an individualist-capitalist framework.

    I think that we all agree on point 1, Dr. Sumner and I agree on 2., and I alone agree with 3.

  51. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    25. November 2011 at 18:43

    Great finishing paragraph, Scott. I like your blog so much more when you’re mocking Krugman than when you’re calling for more Fed purchases.

  52. Gravatar of W. Peden W. Peden
    25. November 2011 at 18:59

    Come on Bob Murphy: you know you love disagreeing with Scott Sumner. I certainly like it when you do, since the result is very nutritious food for the brain.

  53. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    25. November 2011 at 19:21

    Shane, there’s no greater high trust public policy play then my Guaranteed Income system, wherein we auction the unemployed:

    http://biggovernment.com/mwarstler/2011/01/04/guaranteed-income-the-christian-solution-to-our-economy/

    In fact, I think you’ll find my entire approach to govt, which Scott agrees with, is about forcing it to give up the productivity gains the private sector has delivered YOY, precisely to build trust in public policy.

    Its a great Catch-22 to screw the left… we’ll like gvt. the moment it delivers cheaper better services that gut the agents of government.

    Frugal gvt. is the only gvt. that wins hearts.

    Wen things get cheaper and and better, people want more.

  54. Gravatar of Shane Shane
    25. November 2011 at 20:31

    Morgan, that’s great. I actually agree with almost everything in that post you linked to. It’s funny, though. The Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek has called the guaranteed income something like “the only true innovation on the left in the last 30 years”–he was thinking of Lula’s Brazil, not your system, but the weird overlaps are great. And of course, it was Friedman before Lula! Maybe that’s why Hayek called him a socialist!

    Funny, weird, awesome overlaps. Only at TheMoneyIllusion.Com

  55. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    25. November 2011 at 20:39

    Patrick:

    That is precisely right – Tabarrok’s quote IS from 1623. However, Tabarrok writes:

    “It’s one of the ironies of American history that when the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth rock they promptly set about creating a communist society. Of course, they were soon starving to death.”

    The communism had NOTHING to do with the starvation. The starvation occurred in 1620. By 1621, they were not starving.

    “And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

    Tabarrok, however, blames the starvation on the collectivism.

    By the way, the “some kind of party” in 1621 that you reference is almost universally considered the first thanksgiving. If, by “some kind of party”, you mean a three day long feast shared with the wampanoag, about which Bradford wrote: “Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.”

    Starvation? Not so much…

    The 1623 proclamation was merely the formalization of an official feast day. Seemingly, the 1623 Thanksgiving did not involve the wampanoag.

    It is quite clear what Tabarrok meant… He deserves no excuses.

  56. Gravatar of david david
    25. November 2011 at 20:53

    david, It was certainly far more communist than the system that replaced it in 1623, although I won’t debate your point on the terminology. Of course that has no bearing at all on my post, only Tabarrok’s.

    My point was that when you collective agriculture and share the wealth, output usually plummets and people starve. That point stands.

    No, it doesn’t. Your point is only true if the state collectivizes all agriculture; in the normal process of agribusinesses one has numerous organizations employing many people, who each pool their output for sale. To align individual incentives with the organizational good, they generally rely on disciplinary measures rather than indexing individual pay to output; that per-piece pay is curiously uncommon within businesses is an old observation. Nonetheless they produce output and their employees do not starve.

    The cause of this efficiency arises from external pressures that act on the collective group as a whole, of course. It doesn’t have to be price competition. A cold winter works just as well.

    We are rehashing the economic calculation debate of the 30s for no good reason; we both know (I hope!) that the socialists won the debate on the terms set by the neoclassicals and that within the pure neoclassical framework there is technically nothing prohibiting central planning from achieving Pareto efficiency. The state can be a wholly-owned conglomerate writ large and there is nothing that can be said about it.

    Instead the problems with central planning lie in the same reasons private businesses are not arbitrarily large in size: institutional design problems, Hayekian decentralized-knowledge issues, public-choice and the impossibility of perfect costless property-rights/contract enforcement, etc.

  57. Gravatar of JKB JKB
    25. November 2011 at 21:24

    I believe the key phrase in this excerpt from Bradford’s history is: “.. that they might not still thus languish in misery.” This implies that 1620-1622, were not the best to times regardless of their celebration. Interesting that just like modern communist states, they cannot survive without “supply” by external actors. The removal of this “supply” causing a reevaluation of the economic organization with the goal of increasing output.

    =====================
    [Social organization of property and economics at Plymouth – 1623]
    All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expecte any. So they begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Gov[erno]r (with the advise of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corne every man for his owne particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to goe on in the generall way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance), and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other ways would have been by any means the Gov[erno]r or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now wente willingly., into the field, and tooke their little-ones with them to set corne, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.’
    =====================
    http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/14-bra.html

  58. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    25. November 2011 at 22:26

    David: I believe the consensus is that the socialists did not win the economic calculation debate. The problem was that von Mises and Hayek wildly underestimated the capacity of people, even in dysfunctional systems, to “muddle through”. But their basic point was correct, as is obvious to anyone who visited the later Soviet Union or immediate post-Soviet societies. Indeed, given revelations about how Gosplan used Western market prices, the point is even clearer.

    Shane: collectivised agriculture so regularly produces famine (from Lenin’s War Communism, to Stalin’s Terror Famine’s, to Mao’s Great Leap Forward, to Mengistu’s “drought” famine to North Korea’s regular starvations) that trying to excuse it from blame wanders into the repellent. Indeed, my own country has avoided famine in its collectivist outback indigenous communities only due to the operation of a modern welfare state. This is without considering how much of Soviet production came out of the tiny private plots.

    Collectivisation is certainly not the only way to produce famine. The Netherlands has, after all, the distinction of being the first society to ever achieve permanent relief from famine’s horrors. Poverty and inadequate transportation were usually sufficient down the ages. Nevertheless, when North Korea has famines and South Korea does not, when drought in Ethiopia produces mass starvation but the same weather conditions next door in Kenya do not, we can start indicting collectivisation itself.

    On the Irish famine, the combination of weak property rights and bungled administration from London was sufficient. (In the previous famine, Ireland was still run from Dublin castle, and the provision of an import bounty was sufficient to stave off the worse: such a simple and efficient “interference” with the “iron laws of supply and demand” seemed to have beyond the bureaucrats of London 40 years later.) But, again, the potato blight hit across the British Isles and parts of Northern Europe, it was only where one had insecure landlords and weak tenancy rights that mass starvation ensued.

  59. Gravatar of Joe2 Joe2
    26. November 2011 at 04:38

    “Case in point, calling Obama a socialist. This is ridiculous.”

    Why what non carry-over policy has this president advocated that wasn’t socialist?

    One of the worst examples I can think of at the top of my head is the law suit against Boeing for moving a plant to a non-union state.

    This administration may not be socialist in a strict sense, as it looks more and more to be fascist in the true economic sense. However both ideologies share the same house. They are just in adjoining rooms.

  60. Gravatar of Michael Sullivan Michael Sullivan
    26. November 2011 at 05:07

    Scott,

    What Krugman is mocking is not conservatives preference for capitalism over socialism in general, since he and 99% of american liberals share that preference.

    What that passage mocks is many conservatives (especially Randians) seeming certainty that underneath nearly any act of altruism or sharing stands a slippery slope leading inevitably to Stalin and the Gulags.

  61. Gravatar of Peter N Peter N
    26. November 2011 at 05:58

    Joe2,

    “One of the worst examples I can think of at the top of my head is the law suit against Boeing for moving a plant to a non-union state.”

    It’s a right to work state. There are no non-union states, and that’s not really the issue. The Machinists would be out of work regardless, and be faced with organizing a plant from scratch.

    The NLRB technically has legal precedent for such a case form the Reagan administration

    http://www.epi.org/files/2011/Century%20Air%20Freight.pdf

    but it’s never been applied at anything like this scale.

    OTOH as far as I know no union has ever filed a complaint of this scale before either, and the NLRB refused one of the 2 complaints. I think the politicians wish the case would go away, but these things have a momentum of their own.

    It’s not unusual to have your independent regulators decide something politically embarrassing. It happens all the time to both sides.

    Of course Republicans don’t embarrass very easily.

  62. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    26. November 2011 at 07:01

    Benny, I made that point because in my entire life I’ve never met an intellectual who favors “capitalism” as defined by progressives, i.e. exploitation of the poor through state coercion. Ireland was a British colony in the 1840s, I certainly wouldn’t defend their policies.

    BTW, the reverse is also true, I don’t recall ever meeting a left-winger who favored communism as defined by Lenin.

    Patrick, You are probably right.

    Mitt, Yup, see my reply to Benny.

    Ted, I don’t follow you point. If Bradford’s account is correct, but off by a couple years, then it’s still embarrassing for Krugman to cite it as an example of how wonderful “sharing” is. The point is that sharing equally kills people, and the early Pilgrims are a perfect example. Krugman needs to understand that and cite better examples

    Statsguy, A much more plausible assumption is that he’s off by a couple years. Maybe he meant the first successful Thanksgiving after they had enough food to eat. Big deal. But you seem to assume Bradford is lying. Maybe he is, but before I accept that I’d like to see testimony from other settlers that he made it all up.

    Benny, When commenters make statements like this:

    “So I’d not waste so much time and effort on this quixotic quest. I don’t want to waste time lecturing Scott on the history of the Irish genocide because I know that he won’t listen, no matter how many scholarly articles I dig up he will dismiss them. That’s just how people are.”

    I lose all respect for them. That’s a flat out lie and you know it. I never challenged your account of the Irish genocide. I invite other commenters to go back and read what I said, so they can see that you are lying.

    TylerG, Good point.

    Mitt, You said;

    “If we’re talking about the idea’s in the respective theories canon I certainly agree with you, but I was just having a bit of fun with Scott since he brought up the forced collectivization of the Ukraine and compared it to people voluntarily setting up a system before realizing it was ‘inefficient’ (and before the objection; I do know he thinks they are different).”

    That’s a silly comment. I never said the examples were the same in all respects. I said they shared the common characteristic that if you collectivize agriculture then food production will often plummet, and people will starve to death. Do you deny that? Then why is it not a valid comparison.

    Charlie, Very funny. I hope you are kidding, as I’m getting tired of answering moronic comments to this post.

    Patrick, Thanks, and noticed how outraged Statsguy gets when I say something as mild as “assuming he is right.” He starts using capital letters. Well I can use caps too. PATRICK HAS SHOWN THAT STATSGUY IS FEEDING US BOGUS INFORMATION.

    Shane, You said;

    “It’s not clear to me that socialism/communism/collectivism has anything to do with the famines under Mao/Stalin/Kim Jong Il. The urban elite just imposed punitive grain taxes/confiscatory regimes on the peasants, whom they regarded as reactionary and anti-communist. We could easily impose a 100 grain tax on farmers without fundamentally changing our property relations-it would produce similar effects.”

    You are missing the point. Sharing equally is a 100% MTR on work effort (almost 100%.) It causes total food production to plummet. So communism is certainly to blame. Indeed the worst type of communism is the kind described by Marx, contrary to what modern Marxists say. I don’t deny that collectivism is possible on a small scale (certainly families) but don’t know enough about Mennonites to comment

    Becky, Yes, too much pie.

    Peter, You said;

    “I think Krugman is just tired of people on the right calling anything they don’t like socialist, including, especially, himself. There are other and more accurate ways to describe policies you believe are dangerous or misguided.
    Case in point, calling Obama a socialist. This is ridiculous. Now if people want to call his administration’s policies corporatocacy, I’d have to work pretty hard to argue against them (bank bailouts, healthcare giveaways to the insurance industry, though to be fair Bush set a precedent with a giveaway to the drug companies).”

    I agree 100%.

    Bob, Thanks, I’m glad someone enjoyed it. The last sentence was my only point, something others didn’t seem to understand.

    Statsguy, You said;

    “That is precisely right – Tabarrok’s quote IS from 1623. However, Tabarrok writes:

    “It’s one of the ironies of American history that when the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth rock they promptly set about creating a communist society. Of course, they were soon starving to death.””

    I consider that statement to be completely accurate. When someone is discussing something that happened 400 hundred years ago then I’d say 2 or 3 years going by is certainly “soon.” I could find 100s of distinguished history books that use “soon” in that way. It’s all a question of proportion. If you go back to ancient times (say Egypt), “soon” might mean a few decades, i.e. the Egyptians started agriculture and soon after were building towns and temples.

    Again, it makes no difference to his basic point if he’s off a couple years.

    david, Your account of the socialist debate is way too simplistic. Optimal organization structure very much depends on context. All over the world the optimal size of most types of farming is quite small. There are some large farms for certain crops, but workers are often paid on a per piece basis in that type of agriculture.

    This group didn’t have many options. I don’t recall there being many other places for them to move in the early 1620s, as they were the first to arrive in Massachusetts. And they obviously didn’t want to go back to England because of religious persecution.

    JKB. MORE EVIDENCE THAT STATSGUY IS COMPLETELY WRONG. 🙂

    Lorenzo, Thanks for the information on the Irish famine, but you are wasting your time trying to convince people like Benny.

    Michael, You said;

    “What Krugman is mocking is not conservatives preference for capitalism over socialism in general, since he and 99% of american liberals share that preference.
    What that passage mocks is many conservatives (especially Randians) seeming certainty that underneath nearly any act of altruism or sharing stands a slippery slope leading inevitably to Stalin and the Gulags.’

    Agreed, and I have absolutely no problem with that.

  63. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    26. November 2011 at 07:09

    @JKB

    That the corn rule changes in 1623 represented an improvement in the institutional structure of Plymouth is not under dispute. (Interestingly, by the way, the change did not privatize property – property was specifically not yet rendered heritable, so it wasn’t the institution of private property that created the improvement, but rather the privatization of the output of labor – the “plantation” system was also a “private property” system that proved relatively inefficient).

    Tabarrok’s self-serving representation of this singular change as the thing that brought the pilgrims from mass starvation in 1620/21 to bountiful food is the deception under dispute.

  64. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    26. November 2011 at 07:10

    Peter, the NLRB needs to be hung in a tree to teach all the other agencies what happens if you act socialist during a Dem presidency…

    The GOP will make sure they get theirs.

    Shane, love Zizek. Perverts guide is required viewing.

    GI is bound to happen. All logic points that way. We are ALREADY spending more on aid then it will cost.

    Her’e s a good example: If we simply kept all 22M F, S & L public employees at their compensation levels in 1998, indexed for inflation (since they haven’t given us any productivity gains) we’d be saving almost $500B this year, and since 1998, including interest on debt would owe close to $7T less.

    That $500B this year is enough to pay 20M unemployed $25K A PIECE to rub my damn feet.

    The ONLY real economic problem we have, and the reason we have to bring more capitalists (human auction) into the system is because the left doesn’t folow Keyenes.

    The key insight of Keynes is that even in BOOM times, the public employees cannot get wage increases past productivity gains precisely so that when the bust comes, they are not a drag on the system.

    We hear capitalists / libertarians say correctly that what we have now is not any near a real free market, but we NEVER hear DeKrugman complain that Keyenes would want the public employees to to be earning $12.T instead of $1.7T this year.

    Essentially, we can tell DeKrugman is lying because he only like the spend more part of Keynes.

  65. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    26. November 2011 at 07:21

    Scott:

    “But you seem to assume Bradford is lying.”

    “Again, it makes no difference to his basic point if he’s off a couple years.”

    I can’t tell if you are pandering to Tabarrok, or blinded by your own ideology here.

    I did NOT state or assume Bradford is lying. In fact, I specifically assume he’s telling the truth. I don’t particularly appreciate that accusation. I can’t even tell how you arrrived at that conclusion.

    Second, Tabarrok says they were starving soon after landing due to collectivism. THAT IS SO PATENTLY ABSURD it would be rejected out of hand by any serious historian – except, perhaps, Tabarrok’s groupies.

    Key points (if you care to try, please contradict these points directly):

    1) They were starving because they landed in late fall, without sufficient food.

    2) By 1621, they were no longer starving.

    3) 99.9% of historians (and Americans in general) consider November/December 1621 to be the first thanksgiving.

    4) In 1623, privatization of harvests was implemented to further improve output, and was successful.

    What did Tabarrok say? They were starving because of collectivism, and privatization fixed it.

    So please, just deal with it – he’s either lying, or making crud up.

  66. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    26. November 2011 at 09:43

    ‘I did NOT state or assume Bradford is lying.’

    He (or Mount, or Winslow) may well have been. The report published in England in 1622 of the first year the colonists spent in the new world was something of a piece of propaganda (Willi Muenzenberg, call your office). It was designed to entice more to emigrate and bolster the European presence, as there were many unfriendly Indians about. It worked, too.

    The first Thanksgiving on American soil would have been November 1620, as things were pretty good then; ‘…we found a fine clear pond of fresh water, being about a musket shot broad and twice as long. There grew also many fine vines, and fowl and deer haunted there; there grew much sassafras.’

    They gave thanks to God then, in 1621 (those who lived to tell) and probably every year thereafter.

  67. Gravatar of Shane Shane
    26. November 2011 at 09:44

    Morgan, I always wondered why more right wingers don’t read Zizek. But maybe they do! He should have a National Review column. He was, after all, a dissident under Tito!

    Lorenzo and Dr. Sumner,

    I understand that collectivism doesn’t work very well. I don’t want to live in Cuba or North Korea either. But I think you are equating bad economic management with collectivism. They are different things, because collectivism has a number of efficiencies to recommend it–it is just a question of when it works such that those efficiencies happen.

    As for “the type of communism described by Marx”–have you found a new text? Marx only describes communism in The Manifesto and he is rather vague. He says nothing about “sharing equally” either–in fact it would be quite nice if we had a clearer sense of what Marx thought communism should look like.

  68. Gravatar of Shane Shane
    26. November 2011 at 10:05

    Hypothetical example of bad right wing management of the economy: radical repubs (how the meaning has changed since Thaddeus Stevens!) could impose a maximum wage of zero dollars out of a belief that “job creators” are the real backbone of the economy. The effect would be the same as a 100 mtr, but collectivism would have nothing to do with it.

  69. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    26. November 2011 at 14:40

    Shane: collectivising agriculture is the epitome of bad economic management. Even in its “ordinary” operation, it is a failure: that is why China effectively abandoned it in 1979 after 20+ years of fluctuating levels of disastrous failure to make it work. That is why the Soviet Union was only able to cope at all because of the private plots, which were grotesquely more productive than the collectivised land.

    Collectivising industry is no better: that is why privatisation swept the globe. These experiments have been run, again and again. There are no mysterious efficiencies to be harvested if you just get it right.

    This is also why I stressed the “controlled examples” of collectivised and non-collectivised East Africa and collectivised and non-collectivised Korea in the same years. One could run the same comparison for collectivised China and non-collectivised Taiwan. (Deng Xioaping effectively did, hence the radical change in policy after 1979: there is a great story of Singapore PM Lee Kwan Yew visiting China in the 1970s, looking out the windows of his limousine and telling the accompanying members of the Chinese leadership that he wish to congratulate them on achieving something no one else ever had–making the Chinese lazy.) There is no separate “bad management”: there is the thing itself.

  70. Gravatar of Shane Shane
    26. November 2011 at 16:29

    Lorenzo, you’re preaching to the choir. I agree with everything you said. I wouldn’t want to live in a country that actually tried to impose collectivism on a mass scale. But there’s a reason why collectivism works in Hutterite communities in Canada and didn’t work in the examples you cite. The reason is that it wasn’t really intended to work. It was an ideological move designed to punish a hated constituency while imposing a theoretical model of how the world worked. So in this case “the thing itself’ is willingness to use economic policy as a punitive instrument.

    Communist regimes often did this, but there’s no reason to consider it exclusive to them–the example of Ireland under British rule, especially in the period after the Glorious Revolution and in the middle of the nineteenth century, offer another example of policies that were basically intended to create mass starvation. The ideological framework happened to be capitalist-individualist rather than collectivist, but the result was the same. One could imagine a radical right wing government imposing a zero maximum wage out of the belief that all benefits should accrue to the job creators–the effects would largely be the same if it were enforced strictly.

    Some of the most prescient passages that almost seem to predict the Soviet Union, North Korea, etc. come in _Gulliver’s Travels_ book III. But Swift was thinking not about communism but rather, I think, about the kind of “experiments” the British were running with the Irish economy. He tended to equate it with governments run on ideological grounds in general.

  71. Gravatar of Dave Dave
    26. November 2011 at 20:34

    One question popped through my mind going through this thread: How come there weren’t serious sugar/cotton shortages due to the use of slave labour? It’s apparent Mr. Bradford didn’t work those pilgrims hard enough.

  72. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    26. November 2011 at 21:34

    Shane: never ascribe to conspiracy (or malice) what can be explained by stupidity or delusion. Mass starvation in Ireland in the 1840s was not deliberate British policy. It was a mixture of incompetence, poor incentives, bad information and ideological delusion operating in a situation where a poor property rights structure increased the risk of famine. (Not so far from how the Fed, ECB and BoJ do central banking nowadays, or what the Bank of France and the Fed got up to in 1928-32-.)

    Yes, starvation was sometimes used as deliberate policy, and different mechanisms can produce it.

    Sometimes it was an accepted by-product: Stalin was willing to accept mass starvation as a useful by-product to break peasant (particularly Ukrainian) resistance while extracting a surplus he utterly controlled (which was what he was really after–the surplus and the control). But collectivisation drives down production and disrupts, even eliminates, standard mechanisms for managing crop variability. It is famine-prone whatever the intention of the collectivisers: this is particularly when it is being imposed but, as North Korea demonstrates, not only then.

    Cases of small communities making collectivism work have very specific extra features: selection processes, implicit consent mechanisms, strong information flows, strong shared expectations, being embedded in a wider market economy. Absent the set, and it will fail there too.

    If Deng had thought there was some way of making collectivised agriculture work, that is what he would have gone for. It is precisely because experience had shown its limitations as a general policy that he abandoned it, regardless of the significant difficulty within the power structure it gave him to do so.

  73. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    27. November 2011 at 12:23

    Statsguy, You said;

    “What did Tabarrok say? They were starving because of collectivism, and privatization fixed it.”

    Even if Tabarrok is not exactly correct, I could just have well quoted Bradford, and left the rest of my post intact. Bradford says everything I need to make my point, and you say that you aren’t accusing Bradford of lying.

    I am in no position to determine whether Taborrok is accurate, because I have no idea whether Pilgrims were starving right before the 1623 changeover in economic regime. Patrick seems to think it is an open question. I’m simply a blogger citing another blogger. Show me evidence that Patrick is wrong and I’ll make a correction.

    Shane, We certainly do know that collectivism was the problem in China, because the minute they ended collectivism food production soared much higher, and hunger was dramatically reduced. It’s hard to imagine a better controlled experiment.

    OK, I guess the sharing equally was the interpretation of modern Marxists (“to each according to their needs”). In any case, it matters much more what Marxists believe than what Marx actually said. (I’ve read the Manifesto, but not Das Kapital.)

    Agree with your second point, there are many ways to destroy an economy–but collectivism is one of them.

    I don’t think collectivism is always punitive. Mao was obsessed with ideological purity. I don’t think he wanted to punish the peasants, although he was certainly willing to starve them if necessary to build a communist country.

  74. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    27. November 2011 at 12:49

    What possible intellectual or moral gain is there for digging in on collectivism?

    It boggles my mind.

    Every year less and less is needed to give people enough basic housing, hot water, a box to cook food, food, 500 channels, free education, low end medical care, etc.

    We can pile them up in poor cities and make them shop at basic staples state run stores, use public transportation, be a number, etc.

    What’s weird is how the “collectivists” want to keep expanding the definition of what the have-nots need as if it is relative to what the haves have.

    Rawls won that argument for the ages.

  75. Gravatar of J Mann J Mann
    28. November 2011 at 07:47

    I love StatsGuy’s defense of Krugman — “Krugman points out that the first Thankgiving dinner was shared. This is a stick in the eye to libertarians and conservatives, because Plymouth’s collectivism wouldn’t doom them to starvation for another two years, which shows that collectivism is great!”

    1) I share quite a bit of food, but I’m still a capitalist tool. Sharing food doesn’t demonstrate that you’re against private property.

    2) I guess maybe the point is that the first Thanksgiving dinner was collectivist — not only was the food shared, but it was shared whether or not the people who grew the food wanted to share it. If so, that’s interesting, but then:

    2.1) The point that collectivism was ultimately doomed is relevant, particularly if you’re mocking critics of collectivism;

    2.2) It’s kind of a good moral that you don’t always notice the unseen immediately (hence “unseen”), but that it’s still there.

    2.3) I’m kind of curious what the natives’ economic arrangements were.

  76. Gravatar of David Merkel David Merkel
    28. November 2011 at 13:39

    A book that will expand your knowledge of the economics of the Pilgrims:

    http://alephblog.com/2011/08/30/book-review-debts-hopeful-and-desperate/

  77. Gravatar of Scott Sumner Scott Sumner
    28. November 2011 at 17:53

    Morgan, 500 channels are now a basic necessity? I grew up with 3 black and white channels, I must have been really deprived.

    J Mann, Yes, to me he seemed to miss the big picture, and focus too much on a possible error on an unimportant technical question.

    David, Thanks, that review seems to support Tabarrok.

Leave a Reply