Fred Weiss wrote:
> On Sep 1, 1:44 pm, Shrikeb...@
gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sep 1, 8:14 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Sadly, Lincoln repeats here the mistaken "labor theory of value"
I am not so sure - and when he said it would have
been very early in the understanding of the relationship.
IMO, he sees human labor as the "long pole in the tent."
He holds capital and labor as disjoint, and merely notes that
some labor results in capital goods. Lincoln
would have had a state-of-the-art understanding at
the time, but human musclepower was still critical. A
time when it was inefficient lay quite far out in the future -
in agriculture, the 1920s to the 1950s is when demand for labor
in even farming finally rolled off.
Advances at the time were applied to increase production, which
probably led to even more demand for labor.
Given the cost in manhours of a loaf of bread then, it's
not hard to imagine this opinion.
> which
> derives from Adam Smith and which was picked up with relish and
> misused by socialists. Subsequent economists, most famously the
> Austrian School led by Menger and Bohm-Bawerk completely rejected this
> idea.
>
Bohm-Bawerk was 14 years old when Lincoln died. It would be a while...
> Fred Weiss
--
Les Cargill
