[philh]

> The situation was a lot more nuanced than that. The setup of Jamestown as between the Crown and the investors, not the colonists, who were essentially indentured servants for 7 years. Also, the climate was not right for the types of crops the colonists were trying to grow, and as someone else mentioned, the settlers were not accustomed to the environment.

I don't know anything about Jamestown, but... this kind of feels like you're giving more detail, but it's detail that doesn't really contradict the original narrative?

At any rate, I took the original narrative to be: originally the workers received the same amount of stuff regardless of how much they worked, and that went badly. Then the workers started to receive more for working harder, that went better. And your version seems to be consistent with that, even if there were other factors making things difficult for the colony. Like they're two different stories, set in the same universe but focused on different things. One is a history and one is a snapshot, and the snapshot adds more detail but doesn't mean the history is wrong.

That's the impression I'm getting of the two narratives here. I remain ignorant of the actual facts.

[Delmania]

Here a more detailed picture: http://www.ushistory.org/us/2c.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Virginia#Starving_Ti...

While I personally cannot attest to the validity of these sources, it paints a more realistic picture of what happened. The colony's failure was not due to socialism, but to poor planning and expectations.

[philh]

What I notice about those sources is that the original story in this thread

> They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. ... [Later] they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution

seems to not be retold in them. (I only skimmed, so perhaps I missed something?)

So, I guess: if that story is true, then those sources still don't contradict it. They add relevant detail, but if the story did happen as told, then it's still evidence that the "socialist" model worked less well than the "capitalist" model. It's somewhat surprising that those sources don't mention the two models tried. (In this case, I expect the "capitalist" model corresponds to 1619 onwards, "individual land ownership was also instituted". The first source doesn't cover this time period at all.)

And if that story is false, then the correct reply seems to be "um, that's not what happened" rather than "here's more detail".