The Lesson of Thanksgiving...

...is that communal living leads to starvation, while private ownership leads to bounty. That's the premise of this article. The moral of an interesting look (and a story worth reading) at the Plymouth Pilgrims:

"When action is divorced from consequences, no one is happy with the ultimate outcome. If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else. Soon, the pot is empty and will not be refilled -- a bad situation even for the earlier takers."