Regarding Buy Nothing Day -- Thank the gods there's at least a semblance of a free market in this country, so we have the choice to buy or not to buy. The coolest thing about Buy Nothing Day is that it's voluntary -- if it were a government program, they'd force you to buy nothing that day, even if you actually *wanted* to go shopping! They used to have a mandatory Buy Nothing Day every Sunday in Britain -- all the stores were required by law to close on Sunday. Talk about mixing church and state. Fortunately they're moving away from that, and more stores are allowed to stay open now.
But in most countries we have the opposite problem -- governments continually force us to buy things whether we want them or not. They do this in a thousand different ways, from taking money out of our paychecks to giving us parking tickets (a form of taxation when the purpose is to raise revenue). They even take our money by printing more of it (inflation is a form of taxation too -- each dollar printed makes the dollars in your pocket worth less). Then they engage in massive spending orgies that we paid for, blowing ridiculous amounts on products that aren't needed, services that aren't performed properly, and programs that don't work. Many politicians and bureaucrats get six-figure salaries from our money which they're free to spend on all kinds of silly consumer products that you never would have willingly bought.
The higher the taxation and the more government (aka "public") control of resources, the less choice we have. Buy Nothing Day is a great opportunity to remind people that government is forcing us to buy every day. I appreciate your group organizing it and providing this chance to educate people.
Speaking of which, here's a little background on the history of Thanksgiving that I wanted to turn you on to, if you haven't seen it before.
Yours in liberty,
<<< Starchild >>>
Did you know that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of the
triumph of private property and individual initiative?
William Bradford was the governor of the original Pilgrim colony,
founded at Plymouth in 1621. The colony was first organized on a
communal basis, as their financiers required. Land was owned in
common. The Pilgrims farmed communally, too, following the "from each
according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" precept.
The results were disastrous. Communism didn't work any better 400
years ago than it does today. By 1623, the colony had suffered
serious losses. Starvation was imminent.
Bradford realized that the communal system encouraged and rewarded
waste and laziness and inefficiency, and destroyed individual
initiative. Desperate, he abolished it. He distributed private plots
of land among the surviving Pilgrims, encouraging them to plant early
and farm as individuals, not collectively.
The results: a bountiful early harvest that saved the colonies. After
the harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated with a day of Thanksgiving -- on
August 9th.
Unfortunately, William Bradford's diaries -- in which he recorded the
failure of the collectivist system and the triumph of private
enterprise -- were lost for many years. When Thanksgiving was later
made a national holiday, the present November date was chosen. And
the lesson the Pilgrims so painfully learned was, alas, not made a
part of the holiday.
Happily, Bradford's diaries were later rediscovered. They're
available today in paperback. They tell the real story of
Thanksgiving -- how private property and individual initiative [not the
Indians, as in popular myth] saved the Pilgrims.
This Thanksgiving season, one of the many things I'm thankful for is
our free market system (imperfectly realized as it is). And I'm also
grateful that there are increasing numbers of Americans who are
learning the importance of free markets, and who are working to
replace government coercion with marketplace cooperation here in
America and around the world.
Paul Schmidt
PS: A special thanks to long-time Advocate volunteer Cris Everett,
who told us about this neglected bit of history several years ago,
and who celebrates Thanksgiving on -- you guessed it -- August 9th.
-- copied from http://FreedomKeys.com/thanksgiving.htm which was copied from the Nov. 20, 1997 issue of THE LIBERATOR ONLINE at
http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-02-num-21.htm
