If we applied affirmative action to track meets, the fastest runner would not finish first. That's wrong and destroys competitive spirit, innovation, and the will to be an achiever.
Here's real story of the first Thanksgiving
By Thomas Bray / The Detroit News
The conventional Thanksgiving story is one of brave settlers celebrating their first harvest on the rocky shores of Massachusetts. With the aid of Indians who taught them how to plant corn and fertilize it with rotting fish, the Pilgrims had survived their first winter. They gave thanks to God for delivering them to a land of incomparable abundance.
It's a nice story and reasonably accurate. But both the experience of the Plymouth Plantation, and the earlier effort to implant a settlement at Jamestown, Va., also illustrate the critical importance to social survival of getting the material incentives right. Both colonies were nearly wiped out, saved mainly by embracing the much-reviled institution of property rights.
The Virginia Company sailed up the James River in 1607 with 104 people, of whom all but 38 were dead within six months. Another 500 settlers arrived in 1609; famine soon reduced their numbers to 60. The survivors were preparing to sail back across the Atlantic when a stray ship carrying new colonists, including a "high marshall," Thomas Dale, arrived.
Blaming indolence for the colony's lack of success, Dale installed a strict penal code. But he also allotted three acres to each of the colonists for their own use (requiring in return a month's labor for the common good, essentially a flat tax of about 9 percent).
Previously all land was held in common. Each family was expected to pitch in with planting, tending and harvesting crops. As Tom Bethell, author of "The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Throughout the Ages," points out, each settler attempted to free-ride on the work of others, and little work got done.
Once the settlers acquired their own property, the famine disappeared. By 1616, one of the original settlers, John Rolfe, recorded: "Whereas heretofore we were constrained yearly to go to the Indians and intreate them to sell us corne, which them esteeme verie basely of us -- now the case is altered; they seeke to us -- come to our townes, sell their skin from their shoulders, which is their best garments, to buy corne -- yea, some of their pettie Kings have this last yeare borrowed four or five hundred bushells of wheate. ..."
Something similar happened after the founding of the Massachusetts colony. The Pilgrims, according to Bethel, knew of the early disasters at Jamestown and attempted to negotiate assurances that they could own their own houses and land. But the expedition investors, seeking maximum return for themselves, worried the Pilgrims would spend too much time working their own holdings and too little producing profits for the company.
The Mayflower arrived in November 1620 with 101 people. About half died in the first few months of scurvy, pneumonia and malnutrition. Despite the arrival of several more boatloads of Pilgrims, the population of Plymouth by 1623 is estimated at about 150 -- and famine was once again threatening.
So Gov. William Bradford assigned every Pilgrim a plot of land to raise crops. As Bradford recorded in his diary: "This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. ..." Bethel notes that Bradford, who knew his philosophy, also wrote in his journal that the experiment proved "the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God."
There is no end to those who believe themselves wiser than God, and thus tempted by the vision of a communistic heaven on earth. But as the Thanksgiving story demonstrates, this vision has always been a recipe for disaster, for the simple reason that it ignores human nature. The development of property rights in the first colonies, notes Bethel, re-established the link "between act and consequence" -- and achieved a great public good, the success of the New World.
Thomas Bray is a Detroit News columnist who is published on Sunday and Wednesday. You can reach him at (313) 222-2544 and tbray@detnews.com.
It confounds communitarian holding of property in common with Marxian-inspired central planning. The former indeed can and does work under certain circumstances, in particular when those participating enter the arrangment voluntarily out of a religious motivation, cenobitic monasteries and the Oneida and Amana communes being notable examples.
The latter arguably can't: even before it failed in practice, von Mises and Hayek had taken the notion apart. I can never remember which of them argued that the information needed to run an economy couldn't all be collected, and which argued that it couldn't be centrally processed.
I suppose a neo-Marxist could argue that the information processing revolution invalidates those arguments. At a conceptual level it might, but the rise of the internet shows empirically that information has a natural dynamic which runs against centralize processing. In the long-run gnutella wins against the RIAA regardless of how much state power is brought to bear.
I started thinking about the sports "handicapping" thing today because it came up on Rush. Chess players spot lesser players pieces, golfers have handicaps. Lots of sports do this. If you think about it, all gambling odds have the effect of making any given bet equally likely to come out even over many repetitions. But this is not communism.
Ask your students to do a thought experiment. Assume that everyone is given enough to eat, enough clothing to stay warm, and housing to stay dry. What happens next?
What if someone has an idea that might improve things or might produce something others might want? How do you decide what products get made, who makes them and why? What happens if some agree to work and some don't?
I'm not in a very creative mood today, or I could go on. But basically, socialists are never to tell a convincing story about how daily life would go on when there are no financial incentives in life. Since "storytelling" is part of the New Age mantra, I would use this to confront your idealist students. Ask them to flesh out their utopia. Ask them to say what toothbrushes and toothpaste would be like in an ideal society, and how they would be designed, and who would choose the designs.
The premise is based on the inequality in the economic development of the countries. Therefore, Marx argued, when the class relations reach the conditions for the proletariat to take over from the ruling classes, the world's countries will be more or less on the same economic level.
A significant difference was introduced by Lenin to the theory of developing of Communism, where he advocated a program of building Communism via first creating a Socialist economy and a society in a separate state via the means of "dictatorship of proletariat", followed by development of the Socialist economy with a parallel "export of the Socialist Revolution". Thus, Socialism is a transitional state from Capitalism to Communism. We have seen that this particular theory has spectacularly failed (USSR)
The trick is that in the modern society (at least in the First World) the boundary between "the proletariat" and the middle class has almost eroded, thus rendering the main principle of a class struggle more or less meaningless. The latest Marxist theories attempt to fudge the theory by defining the class struggle on the international level, i.e. the so-called "oppressed" classes have become an international force in the light of globalization of the economy.
This, obviously, doesn't wash when taken in the frame of the "pure" Marxism. Plus the globalization, especially amongst the participating economies, has significantly improved the standard of living of the working (oppressed) classes.
The major failing of the theory, I think, is that the societies will increase the standards of living based on the political, economic, and cultural structures within. The more successful will progress to higher standards of living, the less successful will either adopt the successful infrastructure or fail (could Darwin be applied to political economy?)
These are some thought, I could be way off the mark here, if anyone can correct me, please do.
The faster runner gets the scholarship or the contract or the prize money. That is the incentive to actually outperform the others. This is why capitalist societies outperform socialist societies.
Communism has not worked, cannot work, and will not work in any human society because it is predicated upon Marx's Labor Theory of Value.
The Labor Theory of Value is utter nonsense and has properly been consigned to the ash heap of history.
A good assignment for your students would be to critique Marx's Labor Theory of Value. My ten-year son has figured it out; I'm sure your students will see that Marx's economic theory is ridiculous.
In reply to the alleged "ideal environment", it doesn't exist. The absolute disconnect is between "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and the natural consequence of labor - i.e. "reward is commensurate with production,"
Ayn Rand wrote thousands of pages (some unnecessary :)) about what is wrong with the idea that your "need" obligates me to provide for it with my effort.
Sci-fi author Heinlein wrote about the fallacy that value is somehow absolute - anything, including labor, has value only because someone else is willing to exchange it for something valued by the other party, and if the deal isn't fair one party or the other will try to avoid making the deal next time. Of course, in a communist system the definition of "fair" is all about needs determined by a class of ruling elites - the party.
Humans are naturally efficient - most will do the least amount of work which will allow them to achieve whatever standard of living they require.
Lastly, systems of economics and government aren't design to exist in some "ideal environment" but in a real world with existing norms, mores, resources, etc. They evolve out of self-perpetuation. They change into a better fitting system of their own tendency unless held in place through terror and violence.
Cordially,
Note the presupposition here: That higher education is more about "being coached by the best" than it is making efforts to excel. Granted, this premise is partially true, but only partially.
If a student is going to make this assumption, then rewind that assumption into that same 8.5 second student's high school endeavors. If the 4-year high school academic performance was primarily (or more) about who was collectively coaching this student and less about (if anything) their individual academic performance, then this student's contention constitutes a direct slam vs. the high school educators of these students.
Is she implying these students haven't been working with the best of high school educators? If public schools are the great equalizer, as the educrats claim, then isn't equalized access to the great equalizer an equal opportunity for allhigh school students to open the college door for themselves with their high school records?
Affirmative action is not a bad thing - seeking to increase minority participation. However, by instituting quotas and set asides, one then end up applying discrmiantory practices upon the group in order to end up with achieved results.
Bump for later reading.
Great suggestions from FR as usual.
This was Leon Trotsky's belief also. He took it to mean that a fully capitalized society was one in which to implement Communism.
Of course, the concept of private property, private companies, and private investment would not fit that scenario. And, we all know how state run companies fare throughout the world. Marxist ideology cannot withstand the concept of capitalist competition. In fact, Marxism cannot withstand competition in any arena without crushing it. ~So much for individuality, self-determination and entrepreneurial innovation.
I'm pulling from knowledge acquired 40+ years ago.
There have been several American communist experiments with some success but mostly failure. incliuded are the Onida and Amanna colonies. Here locally the experiment was/is called Shekinah and has slowly evolved away from the original purist founders concepts.
Equality is a mental construct that doesn't exist and people come to resent artifical constraints that constantly benefit some with the work others.
I recently read "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek. This book addresses this in detail. It was written in 1944 I think. It's considered one of the classic refutations of Socialist (Communist) ideology. When he speaks of Socialism, he speaking of the state owned and controlled central economy, not the slightly more capitalistic socialism of today. I'm sure someone else could offer a better overview.
Neither one.
Both are guilty of cheating by having rockets hidden in their butts.
A lot of things sound good...in theory. The reason communism can't work as an effective, efficient form of government is because it is completely contrary to human nature.
Communism can't work because it is an ideal based on complete selflessness. That doesn't mean we are all selfish, but it does mean that we, as "individuals," have self interests...such as families and friends. Communism by its very nature must use fear and terror to coerce the population to submit to this selflessness, thus it will always be tyrannical.
If you have a country in which Communism ought to do well in that it has industry, jobs and money then you have a country that doesn't need Communism!
Russia was not really a backward country at all.
In spite of massive turmoil and an incomplete federal structure, it was certainly "modern" enough to kick Germany's butt right into the stone age.
An interesting analogy would be that of the US vs England.
We were less industrialized than England (or Russia in the WWII context) and still won, but Russia absolutely destroyed Germany, not to underestimate the other Allies, by any means.
And they didn't do that by being "backward."
The entire premise is flawed, therefore, no logical or scientific progression is possible.