4 ms·
Even in prehistory, feeding people required a lot of work, that work just took the form of hunting, gathering, and migration, and later cooking and making tools
by leereeves 5y ago
Even in prehistory, feeding people required a lot of work, that work just took the form of hunting, gathering, and migration, and later cooking and making tools to make hunting and gathering easier.
> why should the person who "owns" the land be the one who gets to keep all the value?
They aren't? Many people divide the value in the final product.
The person who owns the land pays other people for farm equipment, fertilizer, weed killers, pest control, harvesting, etc, then they sell the product to other people who add value in various ways and each sells for a higher price.
- beaconstudios 5y agoThe point is that the person who owns the land gets to set the pay of the workers. So somebody who doesn't really have to do any labour themselves gets to choose the fraction of the reward (in reality, a set fee ie a salary) that goes to the people who are actually doing the work. If they're the ones producing all the value by mixing their labour with the land (which the land owner didn't create), then they should be the ones who divide the profits.
- tomp 5y agoOwnership incentivises longtermism. When noone owns the land, this happens: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_...
- beaconstudios 5y agoNo, when you make something a free-for-all, that happens. Conservation areas exist.
- leereeves 5y ago> The point is that the person who owns the land gets to set the pay of the workers. If that were true, the less compassionite owners would set the pay to zero, so it's obviously more complicated than that.
- beaconstudios 5y agoJust because they get to set the pay, doesn't mean their choice is a totally independent one.
- leereeves 5y agoI guess we have different definitions of "set". The word I would use is "negotiate".
- beaconstudios 5y agoSure, that's fair. Regardless, my issue is that the people who do the actual work do not get to determine how profits get distributed - power is held over them by the owner (who is only the owner by virtue of state enforcement of property rights), and this leads to accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. IE, capitalism.