The Great Thanksgiving Hoax

On Nov 25, 2016, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote (in article):

The parallel to the rise and fall of Communism (Soviet style) seems clear:

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Marx would have done will to study this. Lenin figured it to somewhat:

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Joe Gwinn

She worked her ass off for years in a mostly thankless job for peanuts, dude.

The organization coordinates the services of around a thousand volunteers throughout the greater Boston area, and delivers on average nearly a million pounds of food and a quarter million dollars in "I've lost my housing and now I'm on the streets burdening the already-overburdened shelter and taxpayer funded state systems"-avoidance money and goods.

This was and is not a "weekend warrior" operation, it's a large and complicated 24/7 logistical effort.

What type of successful manager is going to take the reigns on that one for $0 a year?

289k in salaries paid in FY2015, and they have ten salaried employees. You do the math on that one and figure out what kind of big baller money these social service workers are making.

You're right. I was in hurry to experimentally determine if there really was such a thing as a free lunch and merely skimmed the book for the dates of interest. I didn't realize that the book was not quite in perfect chronological order.

Cool. Thanks for the quotes and translations. Some random comments follow.

My interpretation: The colonists were city slickers that didn't have a clue about farming. They were probably well aquatinted with the produce markets of the day, but not in growing and storing their food.

In biblical times, it was considered acceptable for a starving man to steal the food he needs: "Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry" (KJV Proverbs 6:30). By "soul", they mean that if he doesn't eat, his should departs, and he's dead. I don't know how much of this was practiced by the Puritans, but it certainly would make a good rationalization for pillaging the granary.

Notice that it specified "only for present use". After the immediate crisis was over, Bradford expected everyone go return to the communal system, and not continue with the temporary capitalist system.

In other words, Bradford has his doubts about community property, but was not quite willing to denounce the idea. From what I've read, most utopias fall apart over the community property problem.

Bah Humbug (T'is is the season, so I can say that) and thanks again.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Yet some volunteer and use old, discarded equipment so they can dedicate even more money to where it's supposed to go.

So, she's just overhead. ...doesn't actually do anything.

There are loads of them. As I said, "Not for Profit" "we aren't getting rich".

Sounds like $300K not helping anyone other than the charity itself.

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Marx never had to run a country. Others of his generation had a better gras p of the problems involved. Mikhail Bakunin had enough sense to point out t hat the "leading role of the party" endorsed by Marx and put into practice by Lenin was a recipe for tyranny.

Lenin died in 1924, and wasn't able to block Stalin from succeeding him.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

An addict.

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This email has not been checked by half-arsed antivirus software

Apparently, "addiction" so thoroughly distorts thought and behavior that all the normal "assumptions" are out the window. Satisfying the

*demands* of the particular addiction is The Prime Directive, so to speak.

And, the stronger the addiction/longer the period of time subjected to it, the more the normal behavior and personality are "warped" as a result.

Over the years, I've met:

- "drug" addicts (i.e., banned substances)

- Rx addicts (typically opiods)

- caffeine addicts (typically coffee)

- "drunks"

- "smokers" By far, the drunks had the most significant personality distortions Smokers seem to be the ones who have the hardest time breaking their addiction -- perhaps followed by Rx addicts (because they can "hide" their addiction AND because they can think that it is a genuinely NEEDED substance?)

It's always been "interesting" to me that they can realize their addiction (and, perhaps even WISH it were otherwise), but can't seem to move beyond the "wishing" stage.

OTOH, it's sad (and alarming!) when you encounter folks who aren't even aware of their addiction(s) -- despite them being obvious to others!

Now we need a passage for when starving men steal from other starving men of their tribe...

I took "as if they were wiser than God" from Bradford, after passages describing how this philosophy split up his community, as bitterness & rejection of the ancient master-planners' "ideal societies."

Cheers, James Arthur

That would be awkward. The clause following the above exert indicates that if the thief is caught, he owes the victim 7 times what he had stolen. If he can't deliver, he gets his house emptied and is sold into slavery. That would be rather awkward having everyone pay 600% interest. I suppose they could issue tickets good for one free lunch until the next harvest. Oh wait... we already do that in the commodities market.

The 8th commandment is quite clear. "Thou shalt not steal". Everything that follows in the annotations and footnotes are exceptions (taxes, commerce, charging interest, speculation, etc). Most of the our laws revolve around how to interpret this simple commandment, and how to deal with the exceptions, usually in the name of expediency.

Very little has changed today. We still have the believers in a free market and the believers in a planned economy. The dividing line moves around depending on circumstances and need, but the two sides of the debate remain unchanged over the ages. Both extremes have demonstrated failures (1929 depression and Communist Russia), causing both countries involved to swing back toward an unstable middle ground. As long as things that motivate such debates remain fairly stable (overpopulation, speculation, concentration of wealth, war, politics, etc), the situation will remain unchanged. Only some external influence, such as invaders from outer space, will unite the two factions into something resembling a stable and workable compromise.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558