From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 19 2002 - 18:40:47 MDT
At 04:02 AM 6/17/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> > (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
Yes, there is no work involved in the water, so I have to admit that my
model was a little simplistic, but I still say there is more to value than
just desire: if there was no water, there would be no value. My position
is now that value is a function of the desire for a type of thing, and the
amount of that thing conveniently available. Labor may or may not be
significant in the availability (even if you were sitting by the water, you
still have to lift it to your face, so its always there), but without the
good being present it cannot have value, no matter how much desire there is
for it.
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