On Sep 6, 10:38 am, ZerkonX X.net> wrote:

Here's my full statement, including the part you so delicately
snipped.

"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"
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."

We've always had labor - and laborers. We had labor before the
Industrial Revolution. Men scratched at the soil for a subsistence
existence paying tribute to their "lords". It was capitalism which for
the first time released that productive energy and allowed men to
invest and keep the proceeds of their investments. The key component
previoiusly absent was *freedom* and the full protection of property
rights - everyone's, not just an aristocracy - including the release
of those laborers who had ambitions of something more and who wanted
to be wealthy themselves.

We still had labor - and laborers. But now that energy was released to
be utilized in more productive ways by men with the creative vision to
accomplish it. The result was an explosion of new technology.

We still had labor - and laborers. But now the same - or even less -
physical energy could be used to produce far more - far, far more. The
result was a vast increase in the standard of living. Such is the
historically unparalled accomplishment of capitalism.

Fred Weiss