Happy Thanksgiving!

We on Hive have much to give thanks for, just because we have Hive. Many countries today terribly censor their populace. England, for example, arrests >30 people a day for social media posts. But because Hive enables pseudonymity people posting from England can post on Hive without fear of arrest and imprisonment.

I personally, apart from my pseudonymous presence on Hive, have much to give thanks for IRL. Since August a corporation has evicted me from my home of eight years under false pretenses, using corrupt courts and willing police to enforce a no trespassing order to prevent me from collecting my belongings. Apprised of this circumstance, my neighbors buckled up and knuckled down to recover for me my personal property before the corporation stole it all. Because of their goodwill and affection I only lost a few $k of property they were unable to recover. Most remarkable to me was that most of them were little old ladies whom I had helped with repairs and home improvements over the years whom were unexpectedly competent to move even very heavy pots weighing >100 kilos to save my garden. None of them would accept any money for their help.

I do not exaggerate when I say that it is difficult for me to maintain my composure at their hard work for no other reason than affection and concern for me. I don't recall ever feeling so loved in my life. I will never forget their kindness and the miraculous blessing they provided me by working so hard to rescue everything I own today from theft by fraud.

What are you grateful for today?

I realize that Thanksgiving is an American holiday that derives from the story of 17th Century immigrants that were blessed by their new neighbors, the Native American tribe of Wampanoag that shared seed and knowledge of growing corn and pumpkins, amongst other kindnesses. But today Tom Renz shared information that was not known to me regarding the reasons for the hardship the Pilgrims had faced after their arrival.

IMG source - Dreamstime.com

When they first arrived they practiced communal ownership of property and shared work. There were no separate titles to plots, nor ownership of produce or goods produced. People were just expected to undertake whatever work needed doing and to take from the common stores only what they needed. Communism practiced in a religious community of a group with a shared ethnic background and that were so motivated to practice their sectarian religion they left their homeland and set off together to develop raw wilderness across a wide and wild ocean.

But that shared cultural, ethnic, and religious background, even so strongly motivated, did not create nominal incentives for undertaking the hard labor of taming the wilderness without personally benefiting, with malingerers availed the same benefits as the hardest working. Tom well explains the reason the little group was soon impoverished and on the verge of starvation.

"When the Pilgrims first arrived, everything was owned collectively. No one owned land. No one reaped the direct benefit of his labor. All harvests went into a common storehouse. All people took equally from it. The result was exactly what common sense tells us it would be: resentment, laziness, lack of productivity, and widespread starvation.

"Bradford wrote that young and able men refused to work hard because the lazy received the same reward. The women rebelled at communal labor they saw as forced servitude. People pretended to be sick. They stole. They stopped working. There was confusion and discontent. He called it vanity. He called it absurd. It was socialism in action."

Faced with starvation and the failure of their community things changed.

"In 1623, Bradford and the leaders did something revolutionary. They scrapped socialism. They assigned private plots of land to each family in proportion to its size. Whatever the family produced, they owned. They could trade it. They could sell it. They could keep it.

"Productivity exploded. People volunteered to work. Women worked in the fields cheerfully. Children helped. Farms flourished. There was food. There was trade. There was prosperity.

"Bradford wrote that “instead of famine, now God gave them plenty.” In 1623, they were not simply surviving. They were thriving. That was the real Thanksgiving."

Common law explains that property is an expression of our will. By dint of our labor we create valuable property we alone will ourselves to produce. Because of this we alone own it, because we alone willed it into being. It is why taxation is theft, too. If we voluntarily provide our valuable labor or property to others, that is our right and by that means we can create even more valuable goodwill, as I relate above about my neighbors. But when we are coerced to part with our property under threat of arms, our will is being stolen. Taxation is slavery. There can be no justification for taking the property, the product of the will that someone has themselves created by coercion, threat, or force. That can only be a crime.

Realizing that failing to avail people of their lawful property was unjust enabled that community to not only survive, but to thrive, by eliminating the injustice of allowing others to take that property by failing to lawfully accord it to those that willed it into being.

DV's do the same thing on Hive. They forcibly deprive creators of the rewards their audience provide them. DV's are taxation, theft, and slavery, and outside of depriving criminals of the proceeds of crimes, such as scams and plagiarism, they can not be considered just and lawful. I am firmly convinced such theft is the reason for the abysmal user retention Hive, and Steem before it, have suffered, and it is obvious that forcibly enslaving creators and stealing their property are utterly unacceptable in a just community of free people. It's a simple thing to fix, but a hard thing to get done, when thieves run the store.

We on Hive today are akin to the 17th Century Pilgrims in which the products of the will of those that created valuable goods were not recognized to own that property. It was only after their property was recognized as theirs and theirs alone, secure from theft, and themselves secure from slavery, did that community begin to thrive, and they were blessed with such abundance their gratitude created a holiday tradition for America, that owes every good to that just security in their property the Pilgrims recognized and provided then. I am confident Hive can prosper for the same reasons by the same means: secure the property of creators that make it, and recognize that theft and slavery that DV's are cannot be just and lawful.