From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 03:02:37 MDT
> (Andrew Clough <aclough@mit.edu>):
>
> I think the answer to the "Value: supply or demand?" controversy is the
> same as the answer to so many other dualities throughout history, like the
> wave/particle duality of light, the answer being "yes, both." Of course
> there wouldn't be any valuable wood if there wasn't any wood, and of course
> there wouldn't be any valuable cut would if nobody valued it at all.
>
> Personally, I'm sure that I don't know whether we should enforce
> intellectual property (though I do have some ill informed opinions on that
> ^_^ ) but there is no reason to waste time arguing on an issue that can't
> be resolved in only one way. It may be that the value function is more
> complicated than
> (work * desire) but I think its been amply demonstrated that if either is
> 0, the function is 0; so, without further ado, and how's that for a
> complicated sentence, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
I have to disagree. Value is created 100% by desire, and 0% by labor,
no exceptions. Water isn't valuable because someone produced it; there
is absolutely no labor involved at all. Likewise naturally-ocurring
blackberries are more valuable than the hemlock berries in the same grove.
The water and those berries aren't the product labor; they existed before
any of us did. They are valuable to us because we can use them to
sustain life, and we therefore want them. If one of us decides at some
point that he wants to kill his neighbor, he might come to value the
hemlock berries to, but no because he put any "labor" into them.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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