[geeks] can't wait for Vista

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Nov 8, 2006, at 12:40 PM, Mike Meredith wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 08:19:56 -0500, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>> It fails with even a hundred.  And, it was already tried in this
>> country.
>>
>> When the Puritans arrived in North America, they set up a system of
>> communal land ownership and communal ownership and distribution of the
>>
>> William Bradford, the leader, changed from this system to one
>> involving  private ownership of land and the colony flourished.
>>
>> q.e.d.
>
> Er ... no. One example doesn't demonstrate anything conclusive about
> communism. In a limited sense, communism worked reasonably well for
> hundreds of years in Russian villages as long as it didn't irritate the
> landowner.
>

Got a link for a description of this system?

> Besides aren't there other examples of colonies failing or nearly
> failing in the US which didn't start communally ? Didn't Virginia have
> early troubles ?

The Jamestown colony had problems.

>
> Most early US colonists were not well prepared for a life in an
> environment where they had to be completely self-sufficient. England's
> economy by the 16thC was sufficiently along the path of specialisation
> that many of the colonists would have been specialists ... tradesmen,
> wool farmers, etc.
>

That is correct, and was part of the problem that Bradford solved by 
giving each person their own land.  Some of the "upper crest" thought 
manual, outdoor labor was beneath them.

Waiting for someone to realize that Wm. Bradford shares a name with the 
list admin ....

--Patrick