From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Jun 14 2002 - 16:10:07 MDT
020613173539.GA13816@piclab.com>
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Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > (Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com>):
> >
> > I think, though, that Lee's definition of property is the problem. What
> > gives an item value is entirely a matter of its marginal utility to its
> > user, while an item's status as property is matter of the fact that
> > labor produced it (or improved it from raw resources).
>
> The labor theory of value is completely and utterly discredited among
> all economists, and no one who holds it is taken seriously. Property is
> nothing more or less than the right to control how others may make use
> of a resource. How one acquires that right is a separate topic.
What I am saying is not the classic socialist labor theory of value.
Furthermore, it is hardly discredited. The entire US frontier experience
was produced by a labor theory of value (a theory that was in use going
back to colonial times and before) where a pioneer could only gain
ownership of land which they had improved to some certain degree. In
1880's Montana, the Homestead Act granted 160 acres to pioneers who had
built a cabin lived on the land for five years (among other things). In
1790's New Hampshire, in the region which became the Indian Stream
Republic (see Daniel Doan's books on this) granted 100 acres to pioneers
who had cleared 5 acres in five years and built a cabin which they lived
in. This 'improvement' of raw resources as a basis for gaining ownership
has a noble and well documented history going back to the Roman Empire
and even the Spartan Republic before that (where freed Helot slaves who
had served in the military were granted land but had to improve it with
buildings and farmland.
>
> > If we own ourselves, then we own our own raw, barehanded
> > physical or mental labor.
>
> Well, sort of--you own the /right/ to decide whether and when you will
> work. Your work has no intrinsic value at all, unless someone else who
> /desires/ your work is willing to pay you for it. Otherwise, all your
> labor is just wasted energy. You have no entitlement to be compensated
> for your labor; you have the right to choose not to labor unless you are
> compensated, but in the absence of such an agreement made before the
> labor is performed, any labor you might perform on your own volition you
> are doing for free.
Not quite. I cut and chop ten cord of firewood. Nobody asked me to, but
there is a current market demand of $150 a cord for cut and chopped
firewood. I offer my firewood for sale, on speculation, and sell for an
average of $160 a cord because I'm so good at my work. My labor
therefore has a value.
I doubt very much that you would argue that after I sold the first cord,
that that somehow entitles nine looters to come and take my other nine
cords away for free.
Now, take, for instance, the further idea that I buy or construct a
robotic learning wood chopper. I then proceed to chop ten cord of wood
while wearing a sensor body suit to record my movements to determine the
perfect wood cutting technique to program the robot with. I then have my
robot chopping wood all the day long at no cost to me, other than the
minor opportunity cost of the raw resources of the trees which weren't
good for much else but looking at or grinding into paper pulp.
Just because the incremental cost of producing a cord of wood for me is
so inconsequentially small, does this mean that others are entitled to
steal my cut wood?
>
> > To use another's labor without recompense is slavery,...
>
> No, only /requiring/ someone to labor by force is slavery. If they
> freely choose to work for your benefit, that's volunteerism.
If they work under contract and you don't pay what you agreed to pay,
that is also slavery. Then there is also peony.
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