Friday, November 26, 2010

The day after

We've been made aware of whining in some quarters with respect to the opinion that conservatives go overboard in politicizing Thanksgiving.

While we are not quite sure what is so "political" regarding the celebration of property rights and ownership, we have respected this complaint and have chosen to air this clip only now, the day after Thanksgiving.

Having seen this at a couple other of our usual interwebs stops, just consider this as you would the glorious Thanksgiving left-overs that you will be enjoying over the next few days.



Sour dough or French bread, toasted, light on the mayo and dark meat only, please. Cranberry and dressing on the side.



4 comments:

steve said...

The Pilgrims were financed by the London Merchant Adventurers. As de facto employees, they did not own the plots of land to which they were assigned. They had no inheritance rights for those plots. Hence, I am unsure what this has to do with property rights.

It does illustrate the importance of aligning incentives properly. If everyone in a company is going to make the same pay, no one will want to work harder than anyone else. Setting up a system that rewards work is what happened from my POV, but then I have managed people for a long time. (The Pilgrims basically defaulted on their payments to the Merchant Adventurers just FTR.)

Steve

K T Cat said...

Off topic college football comment: Cam Newton may win the Heisman, but he's not an NFL QB.

Dean said...

Steve,
do you know the particulars of the investment scheme? I'm wondering if the Pilgrims could've brought those plots from LMA.

The Pilgrims may not have technically owned their plots of land but the fruits of the labor was indeed their own property to do with what they pleased.


KT, I'm watching this ridiculous comeback by Aurburn right now and while I tend to agree with you, I would not put anything past Newton.

steve said...

I have more details in a book somewhere, but this is a brief overview.

http://www.answers.com/topic/merchant-adventurers

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Pilgrims would not have been able to ow land until they bought out their shares for 1800 pounds, the Merchant Adventurers had put in 7,000 pounds, in 1626. After that, and with the introduction of cattle at about the same time, people began to own their own land.

As a story about property rights you have to stretch. As a story about incentives matter, the central point of market economics, it makes a great story. Of course Squanto needs to be accounted for also.

Steve