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Case Studies blog
The Pilgrims Tried Common Property and Went Hungry Until Bradford Changed It Plymouth's common storehouse bred shortage and resentment, Bradford's 1623 land assignment brought plenty, and skeptical historians get a fair hearing. Ludwig Erhard ended price controls on a Sunday and launched a miracle West Germany lifted most price controls in June 1948 against occupation advice. Erhard's choice, its limits and what it teaches about courage in policy. Bills of Rights Alone Never Saved a Republic, Ask the Soviet Constitution The 1936 Soviet Constitution promised free speech while the purges raged. Structure, not a list of rights, is what keeps a people free. Two Germanys and two Koreas, the natural experiments that socialism lost History split two peoples in half and gave one side markets and the other a plan. The results are the closest thing economics has to a controlled experiment. Xiaogang village signed a secret contract in 1978 and China began to grow Eighteen farmers risked prison to keep what they grew, and the Chinese boom that followed is the best evidence for markets that central planners ever supplied. Plymouth tried common property in 1621 and nearly starved before 1623 The Pilgrims began with a common store. Governor Bradford's own history says that giving each family its own land in 1623 ended the hunger. A close reading. Cuba's ration book and more than sixty years of promises at the bodega Cuba introduced its ration book in 1962 as a stopgap. Its survival across generations is the plainest verdict on the revolution, embargo included. Britain's postwar socialism, from nationalized coal to the Winter of Discontent Britain won the war, nationalized its commanding heights, and by 1976 was borrowing from the IMF. How that record made the Thatcher reforms possible. Why Soviet shoppers stood in line, and the calculation problem behind it Central planning failed because planners without market prices cannot know what anything is worth. The argument, from Mises to Novocherkassk. Venezuela was once Latin America's success story, and then came socialism Venezuela sat on the largest oil reserves on earth. Two decades of nationalization, price controls and money printing turned that wealth into hunger and exodus.