Today is Thanksgiving, a time for giving thanks for what? According to history as taught in our government schooling we must be thankful for inhumane child labor laws, suffocating regulations, a violently redistributionist welfare State, degrading victimless crime laws, thieving taxation, and mendacious political predators. In short we are told we must be thankful we have the State for without its civilizing influence we would become vicious cannibals that would rob and exploit each other given the first opportunity. We are told it is central planning that has lifted humanity out of privation and suffering.

Ironically the true history of Thanksgiving is the complete opposite of this fairy tale narrative.

When the pilgrims first arrived in the new world in the early 1600s they enacted a Socialist Welfare State system under which the fruits of everyone’s labor was to be placed in a communal storage facility and divvied out to those who the authorities deem need them most.

As Karl Marx later famously said it two and half centuries later “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The economics of why Socialism and central planning fails every time has not changed.

When control of goods is placed in the hands of the very few who have not produced them, given human nature the result is always waste, corruption, inefficiency, and suffering.

The powerful elite who maintain control of the resources benefit greatly as do their family and close friends who are showered with doles.

When one understands that more resources can be acquired by ingratiating themselves to State authorities this, rather than actually producing more goods, will be the preferred mode of action.

When those who labor and toil to produce these goods are forcefully deprived of their industry to be distributed to the sloth and idle, there will be engendered resentment and bitterness.

There is no surer way to destroy the desire to create and produce than to not allow individuals to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Therefore as there were more and more people taking from the communal pot and less and less people producing goods to add, what resulted was starvation and mass die off.

The pilgrims were almost entirely wiped out due to the enactment of Socialist policies and the perversion of natural market incentives.

By 1623 they were reduced from a population of about 500 to just a measly 60 individuals.

This is when the policy shifted form that of Socialism to Free Market Capitalism with a firm focus on property rights. Each remaining family was given a parcel of land to work and the fruits of their labor were left to them.

What resulted was unimaginable abundance and surplus, so much that they were able to sell some of their goods to foreign markets.

This is a testament to the splendor of the market economy when left to function unhindered.

Thanksgiving is a celebration of the bountiful productivity that results when industrious human beings are left to their own devices. This is the finest expression of spontaneous order.

Do not seek to control your neighbor, through obsequiously appealing to the State, for in doing so you become the monster you fear others to be.

On this glorious day let us give thanks to the multitude of unsung heroes who daily participate in the voluntary interactions that comprise the market economy.

Let us give thanks to the intrepid entrepreneurs who risk capital and resources to overcome innumerable State obstacles to serve you with good and services to improve your life.

For without the wealth they have laboriously created over millennia we would not have a civilization to celebrate.

All who choose to interact with their fellow man voluntarily through consensual interaction; I am proud and honored to call my dear friend.

I hope you all have a peaceful and magnificent Thanksgiving! 🙂

https://steemit.com/thanksgiving/@danilo-cuellar/thanksgiving-is-a-celebration-of-free-market-capitalism