There is much to be said for the new administration’s plan to have a nongovernmental organization investigate how well, or how badly, government agencies are currently handling the taxpayers’ money. But there is a limit to how much money can be recovered by simply cutting back on “waste, fraud and abuse” in federal spending.
There are, however, additional billions of dollars that could be tapped, from a source that not many people think about. That is the vast—almost unbelievable—amount of land owned by the federal government. Some of that land—such as military bases—is used to house the government’s own operations. But the great majority of that land is not.
The rest of this government-owned land is so vast that there is little to compare it with—except whole countries. And not small countries like Belgium or Portugal. The amount of land owned by the National Park Service alone is larger than Italy. The land owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service is larger than Germany. The land owned by the Forest Service is larger than Britain and Spain combined. The land owned by the Bureau of Land Management is larger than Japan, North Korea, South Korea and the Philippines combined.
The idea of selling huge amounts of government-owned land is not new. Before the federal income tax was created in the early 20th century, land sales were sometimes a significant source of federal government income in the preceding two centuries. The prospect of large-scale land sales was considered during the Reagan administration, but the political opposition was too strong.
As of 2015, government-owned lands were valued at $1.8 trillion by the Commerce Department. This is the kind of money that can make a real contribution to the government’s fiscal balance, at a time when so many government operations are urgently in need of support.
As for the current value of these lands to the government, that value is largely negative. The money that these lands bring in is often only a fraction of what it costs the government to take care of them. Wildfires on land managed by the federal government have been about five times the size of wildfires on “non-federal lands,” according to a 2022 study by the Congressional Budget Office.
Land transferred from federal ownership to the market economy can also contribute to more affordable housing. When the same kind of house costs several times more in one part of the country than elsewhere, it is often because the cost of the land is higher rather than because the house costs more to build. That in turn is often because the land is either more scarce or because of laws restricting the building of anything on that land. But, where more land is available to build on, the same kind of house can cost a fraction of what it costs elsewhere.
The federal government owns a little more than one-fourth of the total land area of the United States. The time is long overdue to consider whether that is the best economic arrangement. And reconsideration is especially needed at a time of urgent fiscal problems.
A federal judge ruled Friday that American Airlines's pension fund had violated the law by making investment decisions using criteria other than the interests of the plan beneficiaries. The decision by Judge Reed O'Connor, a George Bush appointee serving the Northern District of Texas, comes from a decision by American Airlines management to allow the pension fund to be managed by BlackRock, which in turn used Environmental, Social, and Governance principles rather than financial performance to guide investment. //
For the reasons explained below, the Court concludes that the facts compellingly demonstrated that Defendants breached their fiduciary duty by failing to loyally act solely in the retirement plan’s best financial interests by allowing their corporate interests, as well as BlackRock’s ESG interests, to influence management of the plan. However, the facts do not compel the same result for the duty of prudence. Defendants acted according to prevailing industry practices, even if leaders in the fiduciary industry contrived to set the standard. This is fatal to Plaintiff’s breach of prudence claim. //
The day before Judge O'Connor ruled that BlackRock had sacrificed the pension payout to plan beneficiaries on the altar of ESG investing, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, with $11.5 trillion in assets under management, announced its withdrawal from Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, an international group of asset management companies "committed to supporting the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner."
This makes BlackRock the latest asset manager to reconsider the business model of screwing over investors in exchange for invitations to all the right events. //
The exits are clearly linked to the American Airlines lawsuit, which imposes liability for damages on asset managers for breaching their fiduciary responsibility. One can't ignore the effect of an incoming Congress that is skeptical of ESG. Last summer, the House Judiciary Committee labeled the ESG movement as violating antitrust law.
Less than a year before the end of World War II, then-U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drew up a nightmarish plan to punish postwar Germany.
After the serial 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II—along with the failed Versailles peace treaty of 1919—the Allies in World War II wanted to ensure there would never again be an aggressive Germany powerful enough to invade its neighbors.
When the so-called Morgenthau Plan was leaked to the press in September 1944, at first it was widely praised. After all, it would supposedly render Germany incapable of ever starting another world war in Europe.
Morgenthau certainly envisioned a Carthaginian peace, designed to ensure a permanently deindustrialized, unarmed, and pastoral Germany. //
When the dying Nazi Party got wind of the plan, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had a field day. He screamed to Germans that they were all doomed to oblivion if they lost the war, even growing opponents of the Nazi Party.
Even many Americans were aghast at the plan.
Gen. George Marshall, the Army chief of staff, warned that its mere mention had galvanized German troops to fight to the end, increasing American casualties as they closed in on the German homeland.
Ex-President Herbert Hoover blasted the plan as inhumane. He feared mass starvation of the German people if they were reduced to a premodern, rural peasantry.
But once the victorious allies occupied a devastated Germany, witnessed its moonscape ruined by massive bombing and house-to-house fighting, and discovered that their “ally” Russia’s Josef Stalin was ruthless and hellbent on turning all of Europe communist, the Harry Truman administration backed off the plan.
There is a tragic footnote to the aborted horrors of the Morgenthau Plan. Currently, Germany is doing to itself almost everything Morgenthau once dreamed of.
Its green delusions have shut down far too many of its nuclear, coal, and gas electrical generation plants.
Erratic solar and wind “sustainable energy” means that power costs are four times higher than on average in the United States.
Once-dominant European giants Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes are now bleeding customers and profits. Their own government’s green and electric vehicle mandates ensure they will become globally uncompetitive.
The German economy actually shrank in 2023. And the diminished Ruhr can no longer save the German economy from its own utopian politicians.
The German military is all but disarmed and short thousands of recruits.
German industries do not produce enough ammunition, tanks, ships, and aircraft to equip even its diminished army, navy, and air force. //
After World War II, the Truman administration rejected the notion of a pastoral, deindustrialized, and insecure Germany as a cruel prescription for poverty, hunger, and depopulation.
But now the German people themselves voted for their own updated version of Morgenthau’s plan—as they willingly reduced factory hours, curtailed power and fuel supplies, and struggled with millions of illegal aliens and porous borders.
Germans accept that they have no military to speak of that could protect their insecure borders—without a United States-led NATO.
Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing—and destroying—itself.
If the US government absorbed/forgave all private debt to China and then defaulted on its own debt to China, that might be a pretty big pile of dollars that Beijing could kiss goodbye should they attack Taiwan. And it might deter them from doing just that. As a natural consequence of this goes the presumption that we would no longer trade with China. We're their biggest customer, and losing the US market is also going to be a kick to their stomach. //
lifer1
4 hours ago
There is a flaw in your assertion that "money has no intrinsic value." While true, it is too simplistic. To be sure, that assertion is the basis for the ill-named, Modern Monetary Theory, that has caused so many Swamp creatures to spend like debt and deficit mean nothing until Election season.
Money represents goods and services. It is an intermediate currency whose soundness is key to translating one type of commodity or labor to another with relatively equal representation.
The problem with MMT and spendthrift politicians who reconcile their excess spending by printing more currency is that it doesn't so much devalue the currency as it devalues what the currency represents, which then increases the number of dollars needed to complete commercial transactions.
That is the meaning of inflation. When one defaults on a debt like ours to China, that has the identical effect of printing $1T in new currency to flood the markets as well as undermining the markets' trust and confidence in the brokers of that currency.
Do you want to see the dollar replaced as the global currency? Default on a debt.
Bad idea. Such a bad idea that its proponent likely failed Econ 101.
No, the way that's been handled, historically, is to win a war and assign a war reparations to the loser that has the effect of canceling the debt. It's not done overtly since doing so could be read as defaulting. No, the loser is assigned damages that effectively covers the debt. Then it becomes a ledger exercise, provided everyone believes it to be legitimate.
Javier Milei has shown what can be done. He's turned a deficit into a surplus for the first time in more than 100 years in their country, and in such a short time in office.
It may take a little longer for us, but how do you do it? With commitment, will and afuera! //
Musk cited remarks from Ronald Reagan from 1975, before he was president. But it's all kinds of sense when it comes to tax policy as he explains that even then the government was taking about half of what Americans earn. Reagan spoke out against taxes on businesses that the left pushes but then end up landing on the people. //
"We oughta have tax reform, and we oughta start by making it so simple you don't have to hire a lawyer to figure out how much you owe every year," Reagan said.
"We live in the only country in the world where it takes more brains to figure out your income tax than it does to earn the income," he quipped.
"There's very little that government can do as efficiently and economically that people can't do themselves. And If government would shut the doors and sneak away for three weeks, we'd never miss 'em." //
How much of a tangle is everything in? The Office of Management and Budget can't even tell you how many "boards, commissions, agencies, bureaus, and departments there are in the federal government."
We've been talking about this for almost 50 years. We're at a point where the words are more true than ever and where we now have a golden opportunity.
You finally have Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy with the force and the will. Now, they need to harness that same common sense and make it happen, despite the people who will try to stand in their way.
Nancy Mace
@NancyMace
·
Follow
It’s not the number of pages that matter - it’s what’s in those pages.
This CR had the same level of spending today as it did yesterday, but the debt ceiling was suspended, meaning there was no limit on the debt. I don’t trust Congress or the government to spend responsibly… Show more
6:50 PM · Dec 19, 2024
Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
·
Shorter = better. This bill is only 116 pages, instead of 1,500+ pages. Took a LOT less time to read. Glad to see the following garbage from yesterday’s bill removed in the current version:
- Congressional pay raise/health benefits
- 17 miscellaneous commerce bills
- Random new… Show more
Elon Musk @elonmusk
Yesterday’s bill vs today’s bill 😂
4:52 PM · Dec 19, 2024
Townhall.com @townhallcom
·
.@RepChipRoy: "SWAMP'S GONNA SWAMP!"
"We're just fundamentally un-serious about spending. As long as you got a blank check you can't shrink government. If you can't shrink government you can't live free!"
10:51 AM · Dec 17, 2024 //
This is not the Way. And how long has it been, by the way, since Congress approved an actual budget? Oh, that's right - 1997. It would almost be funny if it wasn't so alarming; it's like they aren't even trying. //
We, and our elected representatives, would do well to remember the words of the late Barry Goldwater:
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. //
TheAmericanExperiment
3 hours ago edited
"I'll go one step further and say that we must reduce not only the deficit but the national debt. "
Ward,
The national debt is a fiction. The interest however is very real and the owners of The Federal Reserve System (fancy name for private -for profit corporation) are raking it in.
JP Morgan financed two American wars in the late 1800s. How did he do it. He loaned the Federal Government actual dollars from his bank reserves. in the early 1900s he had an idea for the most lucrative business in the history of the world. Financing the Federal Government with monopoly money.
In 1910 he got together with eight other titans of banking and crafted the plan for The Fed. 15 regional banks all plugged into a central bank in DC but ultimately run by The Fed in New York.
What's cost of printing money? Inflation.
If the Federal government was printing money into existence that would be the cost. Inflation.
So why do we have a national debt in addition to inflation? The Mandrake Mechanism. The Federal Government doesn't print money. In 1913 they granted The Fed a charter to do that and then loan the money to the government at interest. The Fed literally creates money out of this air and then loans it to the American people. Now The Fed can only finance debt and what was their model? Financing wars. The US Congress was very debt averse but one thing you could count on them for... financing a war. The story goes on and on.
For the last 110 years we've had a State Department and CIA fomenting trouble all over the world. Starting fires and then putting them out. And back home we have an FBI always vigilant for any member of Congress, the press or the public for that matter who questions the lucrative arrangement.
So there is no national debt. It's all stolen money. Call it the crime of the last century. //
Leitmotif Sam Grant
an hour ago
Understood. And I do not disagree that the Creature From Jekyll Island has been a manifest cancer on the body politic of the republic
But, I'm less inclined to agree that it's principal goal has been to forment foreign wars.
Rather, it's principal goal has been to privatize the profits of big member banks, while simultaneously socializing xing the risks and financial busts that are a direct result of the inherently fraudulent fractional reserve banking paradigm that is, alas, at the very core of our modern financial system. //
anon-qacb Billy Wallace
4 hours ago edited
In 2008 our National Debt was around 10 Trillion, that's the year Obumer took office. The Democrats have held the Presidency 12 out of the last 16 years and our deficit is now 36 Trillion. So it took us 240 years to get to 10 trillion and only 16 years to add another 26 trillion more. How does that even happen, That is NUTS ! Regardless of which party you belong to we all should have enough brains to realize this can't continue. Name calling does nothing to help the cause and bring people together.
According to Bukele, El Salvador may be sitting on unmined gold reserves worth an estimated $3 trillion, approximately 8,800% of the nation’s current GDP.
In a series of posts on social media platform X, Bukele projected that the country potentially has “the largest gold deposits per square kilometer in the world.”.
GOD PLACED A GIGANTIC TREASURE UNDER OUR FEET: El Salvador potentially has the highest density gold deposits per km² in the world. Located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the richest areas in mineral resources thanks to its volcanic activity.
But it isn’t just gold that is important. Studies have identified the presence of a wide range of critical metals and rare earth minerals: Cobalt, lithium, nickel, platinum, iridium, titanium, and germanium. //
The president claims that ‘responsible mining’ can be done, but there is no evidence to support this claim,” Pedro Cabezas, a member of the Central American Alliance against Mining (ACAFREMIN), told Newsweek. “There are no examples of ‘responsible mining’ that haven’t caused serious impacts. The effects in El Salvador would be terrible,” he warned.
But Bukele makes a persuasive case that a richer country is a cleaner country.
“I understand the concern. El Salvador has 95% of its waters polluted. Imagine if we pollute them further; we’ll end up with 97%, 98% contamination. The reality is that when 95% of your rivers are polluted, you shouldn’t focus on saving the remaining 5%, but on recovering the 95% that was lost,” Bukele argued on Thursday. “If we had 95% of our rivers clean, then we could focus on maintaining the status quo.”
“The only thing we can do is invest billions of dollars to clean up the polluted waters. And to have those billions, we need resources that can easily be obtained from mining,” he added, according to Diario El Salvador.
Lawmakers can help to lower long-term interest rates by getting the country’s fiscal house in order and lowering our structural deficit.
Both in his first term and since the November election, Donald Trump has pointed to a rising stock market as an endorsement of his policies. He would be wise to keep his eyes focused on another key economic indicator.
As the Federal Reserve started a round of interest rate reductions, mortgage rates rose again over the past two months. Coming as those locked out of ultra-low rates during the Covid panic face serious obstacles to purchasing the home of their dreams, the development should emphasize to Trump and his team the importance of fiscal discipline in maintaining economic stability for American families.
Thomas Hornall
@Thomashornall
I’m British.
I recently spent 10 days in the USA for business.
And discovered the ocean between us isn't water.
It's mindset.
7 uncomfortable truths about US v UK culture:
The answer to inflation, say the authors, is discarding long-held misperceptions that helped bring on the current crisis. They include the notion that central banks can create prosperity by producing money “out of thin air,” and that economic “stability” requires “a little inflation.” For decades these ideas have been Holy Writ in Washington. Inflation shows why they’re misguided, and also why the heedless money-printing being pushed today by left-wing advocates of “Modern Monetary Theory” would lead us down the road to disaster.
Michael Shellenberger, who has been involved in breaking down some of the Twitter files releases, has posted a thread and an article about the World Economic Forum, ahead of its meeting in Davos this week.
Shellenberger says that the World Economic Forum is “fighting back against those who say it and its founder are seeking global domination through a ‘great reset’ aimed at stripping the masses of their private property, de-industrializing the economy, and making everybody eat bugs.” But Shellenberger takes apart that “defense.”
A WEF managing director claimed in August of last year that the “you’ll own nothing and be happy” meme was a conspiracy theory started by an anti-Semitic account on 4Chan. But that wasn’t true, since it was based on an article on the WEF website from 2016. The spokesperson mentions that article but downplays it as a “years old” opinion article.
The managing director also leaves out the subsequent video put out by the WEF in 2018 that makes it seem far less like a “years-old article.” While they deleted the page that had the video on their site, the video is still up on their Twitter and it’s a creepy, prospective look for 2030.
It was significant enough for them to put together this video that repeated the “own nothing” claim, as well as phasing down meat and eliminating fossil fuels. The video is a festival of all kinds of leftist aims in one place.
Shellenberger noted that if the WEF is calling on others to be transparent, why are they deleting their web pages and why aren’t they forthcoming about their own financial information?
Tridus Ars Tribunus Militum
17y
2,269
Subscriptor
but are roundly condemned in the cryptosphere as ethically dubious at the least.
... as opposed to what? There is no such thing as "ethical" crypto.
Seems to me like this was working as intended, except the people expecting to scam others got scammed instead and got mad about it. None of these things have any actual value.
As for the idea that this kid is an "entrepreneur" because he did a crypto rug pull... well that's pretty much why American business as a whole is in decline globally. It's not about creating sustainable business models: it's about profit today no matter what, and if the whole thing collapses later it's someone elses problem by then.
Literally everything about this screams "terminal decline of late stage capitalism" and "people are still suckers."
There is an objective approach that DOGE could apply that would substantially reduce the footprint of the federal government called CPI-X: A Novel Method to Decrease Spending and the National Debt.
In short, CPI-X (CPI minus X) would tether federal spending to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), using the CPI as a baseline, and accomplishing actual spending cuts via the “X” in the equation. The X-factors in CPI-X are derived from benchmarking the spending of the U.S. federal government, states, and other countries along 10 basic policy areas, such as defense, health, education, etc.
CPI-X was originally developed in the early 1980s and used to reduce spending under UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s privatization plan. In the 1990s, it was also utilized in Australia to regulate the pricing of public utilities. In both instances, CPI-X was successful.
Revolutionary reform concerning how the U.S. government functions and spends taxpayer dollars is long overdue. //
For instance, did you know the federal government does not even know precisely how many agencies and departments currently exist? According to the National Archives, the number stands at 435, whereas the Office of Personnel Management lists 646. //
C-K
3 hours ago edited
I was in the Federal government or a contractor for 23 of my 40 working years. The biggest problem I saw was an agency has to spend all the money it was allocated in a fiscal year otherwise their budget would be cut by the amount of underspend the next year. When large pieces of capitol equipment needs replacing or facilities need to be built or renovated, a separate appropriation over and above the annual operating budget must be approved.
Why not change the laws to allow agencies to “bank” underspend for X number of years in interest bearing instruments? This accumulated underspend plus interest could then be used to help offset future capitol expenditures.
Agencies having to spend all their allocated funds in one fiscal year is insane and leads to wasteful spending. //
Vahn Geo
3 hours ago
This is a smoke and mirrors plan. And its bullshit. A chainsaw and an axe are what is required. Period. //
S'Naut Right
3 hours ago
Formulaic paths to cuts are rife with opportunities for finagling. I dont like this idea, at all. Just straight with the broad axe, please. //
anon-umsv
4 hours ago
This is just another over-thought proposal of incrementalism along the same vein as the ridiculous Penny Plan. Slowly attempt to starve the swamp over 20 years to bring the budget down to $6 TRILLION, while the country is suffering from government bloat. No, Trump only has four years. He needs to ruthlessly attack the beast. Fight! Fight! Fight! //
surfcat50
4 hours ago
This would be a great idea IN ADDITION TO using the chainsaw during Trump’s term. ///
Also switch from baseline budgeting to zero based budgeting. Don't start with last year's budget, start from zero and justify each line item.
The Susu club is a universal feature of the Liberian workplace. Hardly any agency, trading firm, or NGO is without a Susu Club. The Susu club comes in two variety, the non-profit and the commercial. The non-profit is the more benign of the two. It is normally organized rather informally. The employees of a company, or even a section of a company agree to form a Susu club and will pay a certain amount of their salary to the club cashier every month. In an non-profit Susu, the percentage of the salary pledged tends to be higher than in a commercial Susu. The drivers of one NGO operating in Liberia pay 70 USD, about one third of their salary, into their Susu account every month. But every month one of them is the lucky one. He will receive the combined input of the other Susu members. In this particular Susu club the payout is 700 USD. The next month it is another persons term to collect the 700 USD. So, the Susu club is in effect, a revolving loan given by the paying members to the receiving member. The advantage for the member is that, once or twice a year, depending on the structure of the Susu club he gets paid 700USD instead of his regular salary of 250 USD.
Citizen_bitcoin
Jameson Lopp (@lopp) on X
Hospital bill for delivering a baby + 1 week recuperation in 1956.
Total: $107.55
The US is an outlier in healthcare costs, by almost a factor of two, while delivering comparable or inferior results.
…
US performance is generally comparable to, or poorer than, countries that spend much less. I could not find any significant health metric in which the US excelled over other first-world countries.
The Economist Changes Tune on Javier Milei: Actions Deserve ‘to be Watched Closely Around the World’
No one on the left liked the idea of Javier Milei winning in Argentina, especially The Economist.
The publication has changed its tune since Milei, who has been president for a year, has elevated Argentina with his libertarian ways.
Gee, maybe, just maybe, people should listen to us libertarians. //
Yes. Milei is a true libertarian who has embraced small government, free markets, and Austrian economics. That is why Milei is the only politician I genuinely adore and support. I cannot believe I am agreeing with The Economist:
The left detests him and the Trumpian right embraces him, but he truly belongs to neither group. He has shown that the continual expansion of the state is not inevitable. And he is a principled rebuke to opportunistic populism, of the sort practised by Donald Trump. Mr Milei believes in free trade and free markets, not protectionism; fiscal discipline, not reckless borrowing; and, instead of spinning popular fantasies, brutal public truth-telling.
—
What is fascinating is the philosophy behind the figures. Mr Milei is often wrongly lumped in with populist leaders such as Mr Trump, the hard right in France and Germany or Viktor Orban in Hungary. In fact he comes from a different tradition. A true believer in open markets and individual liberty, he has a quasi-religious zeal for economic freedom, a hatred of socialism and, as he told us in an interview this week, “infinite” contempt for the state. Instead of industrial policy and tariffs, he promotes trade with private firms that do not interfere in Argentina’s domestic affairs, including Chinese ones. He is a small-state Republican who admires Margaret Thatcher—a messianic example of an endangered species. His poll ratings are rising and, at this point in his term, he is more popular in Argentina than his recent predecessors were.
Milei practices what he preaches. //
Tiki | November 30, 2024 at 6:48 pm
Funny how the economist doesn’t mention how Kirchnerism (crony socialism) ruined Argentina.
There’s gonna be a major US-Argentine trade pact. Musk will be siting his southern hemisphere IT hub there. Watch to see who gets picked to be ambassador.
The Europeans/Internationalists want to lock us out of Brazil and SA, but Milei/Musk will to lock them out of SA tech.
Milei is powering an industrial renaissance via a deregulated oil industry.
Milei didn’t fall into the IMF trap.
Bernie Sanders
@SenSanders
·
Follow
Elon Musk is right.
The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.
Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.
That must change.
12:07 PM · Dec 1, 2024. //
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
·
Follow
Gonna happen 😂
ALEX
@ajtourville
The IRS getting audited by the @DOGE
Embedded video
10:51 AM · Nov 27, 2024
We should never forget that the Plymouth colony was headed straight for oblivion under a communal, socialist plan but saved itself when it embraced something very different.
In the diary of the colony’s first governor, William Bradford, we can read about the settlers’ initial arrangement: Land was held in common. Crops were brought to a common storehouse and distributed equally. For two years, every person had to work for everybody else (the community), not for themselves as individuals or families. Did they live happily ever after in this socialist utopia?
Hardly. The “common property” approach killed off about half the settlers. Governor Bradford recorded in his diary that everybody was happy to claim their equal share of production, but production only shrank. Slackers showed up late for work in the fields, and the hard workers resented it. It’s called “human nature.”
The disincentives of the socialist scheme bred impoverishment and conflict until, facing starvation and extinction, Bradford altered the system. He divided common property into private plots, and the new owners could produce what they wanted and then keep or trade it freely.
Communal socialist failure was transformed into private property/capitalist success, something that’s happened so often historically it’s almost monotonous. The “people over profits” mentality produced fewer people until profit—earned as a result of one’s care for his own property and his desire for improvement—saved the people.