On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:04:03 -0700, Fred Weiss wrote:
> On Sep 1, 1:44Â pm, Shrikeb...@
gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sep 1, 8:14Â am, Bret Cahill
aol.com> wrote:
>>>>> "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the
>>> fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first
>>> existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher
>>> consideration."
>>
>>> -- Lincoln
>>
>> While that is true, if we didn't store our labor in the
>> form of capital, we'd still be in the stone age right
>> now.
>
> Actually, it's not true. "Capital" has relatively little to do with
> "labor". It is the product primarily of *intelligence* and its value
> resides not in whatever labor may have gone into achieving it, but in
> the creative and productive way in which it is applied to improve our
> lives, i.e. investment.
Nope. There is a distortion of capital which may actually be legitimate
called "human capital". This is the learning of already created
knowledge. And it is the result of labor in the effort of learning and it
is owned by the individual human who made the investment.
> We've always had labor as you correctly point out. But it accomplished
> very little except subsistence for the vast majority of people until
> the creative energy of the most productive people was unleashed with
> the establishment of free societies committed to protecting individual
> rights, especially property rights - and thus the investment of
> capital could flourish unimpeded.
A total misrepresentation designed to legitimize the incorrect notion that
a store of wealth (savings/money) is capital.
> Sadly, Lincoln repeats here the mistaken "labor theory of value" which
> derives from Adam Smith and which was picked up with relish and
> misused by socialists.
Well... You accidentally got something right!!! Marx misused Smiths
theories concerning the fact that value could be measured in cost units
which are always units of labor, i.e. all cost is labor.
> Subsequent economists, most famously the
> Austrian School led by Menger and Bohm-Bawerk completely rejected this
> idea.
The Austrians are a laugh. And that includes Hayek.
--
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of society but the people themselves; and
if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson
http://GreaterVoice.org/extend
