[geeks] can't wait for Vista

[Mike Meredith]

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.

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 ?

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.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
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