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Fair enough: > Where was the act of creation that led to the increase of the value? I'm not sure what you mean. Finding and extracting the asset adds a valuab

Fair enough: > Where was the act of creation that led to the increase of the value? I'm not sure what you mean. Finding and extracting the asset adds a valuable, productive good to the economy (ignoring the enormous downside). Are you debating the word choice, "creating"? I guess I don't see that discussion as valuable. Are you using the word choice to make a point? Make it! > How did the land to acquire become yours? You know how; again, please make your point? > Most likely you didn’t discover the land, or do anything to find the materials (hiring people to do labor) so there’s no reason to think you should receive anything Is all of this an argument for communism - the only ones who do anything valuable are the workers? I think that's as self-serving and narrow-minded as the ultra-capitalists who think only they matter. Providing and allocating capital is essential and a valuable skill; if it's easy for you, I'm sure you have plenty of it by now.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
>the only ones who do anything valuable are the workers? Correct! Because the act of creation is where value is created. By definition capital does not create value, otherwise there would be no requirement to have labor to do the “transformation.” Exactly to your point I have at points had quite a bit of money (not currently true). But it’s not from “capital growth” it’s from aggressively selling my labor and capturing the majority of my labor value. That said, if you were to compare the amount of value, I’ve created to the amount of money I received, It’s not even fucking close I’ve created 1000x more value than I have captured. Why? because at the time that I did those deals, I was not in a powerful enough position to demand the value capture, because we’re stuck in a state where the vast majority of people need to debase themselves simply to survive. Is that the type of system that has long term capacity for multigenerational equitable success? The answer is no and there’s no way you can slice that that makes it a yes. If, however, your goal is a infinite race to the bottom for worker self exploitation, where people will literally destroy themselves in order to otherwise survive, based on the whims of hoarded capital owners arbitrary self inflated egos about how the world works. Having been a LP in a venture fund, a Director in a large public company, and a multitime start up founder I can guarantee this is exactly how it works. If that’s the world you want then we’re right on track.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Well, I wouldn't go nearly as far as you do, but I do appreciate your up front, clear argument for your point. My perception is that the labor/capital allocation of return is far out of whack, due to a power imbalance. But I feel you still aren't accounting for the value of capital. It's too easy an answer, intellectually, just to dismiss the whole thing and ignore the complication. Production requires capital and labor. If I lend you my truck for your contracting service, shouldn't I get some return on that? What if you use my property to manufacture your skateboard (or whatever)? What if I give you some of my personal cash to hire workers, who then produce the skateboards, which you sell at a profit? I know these are simple, chosen examples, but where do you see the problem and how do you quantify appropriate returns?
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    No, you did nothing. Why would you get anything? Holding keys to a cache of goods isn’t a skill. Even if you claim to have thought really really hard about when to open the vault, the simple act of hoarding less, does not transform the goods into value. The fact of hoarding, crowds out others use of the resource (reducing monetary velocity) so that means for people who want to make more, the choices made for when to open the vault are solely dependent on an mathematically unequitable distribution of the resultant created goods, in effect stealing directly from the people making value. To be clear I’m not making the Labor Theory of Value argument - I’m simply demonstrating that by capitals own standard (increase in value based on capital labor mix) capital should get no excess return. In fact the only argument capitialists have left is the contract and this is the Mises style MaximumCapitalist like Hans Hoppe. The argument goes that as long as a contract is signed, there cannot be anything unethical.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      If we simplify away the personal issue of 'that's my truck; you'll have to pay me to use it' - we forget property rights and the psychological attachment to property, which I don't think is realistic or wise. (Also, I've recently been reading about 'cultural universals' - behaviors in all/most/many unrelated cultures through time and geography that are not biologically determined (as far as we know) - and property is one of them.) I'm sure you know the next issue: How in your system is capital efficiently allocated? The issue is not hoarding (or not necessarily), it's natural scarcity of capital. How do we decide who gets to use the truck or the property, etc.? We know the capitalist method of allocation, which is rather productive in aggregate. Other methods have been unproductive, broadly speaking. First come first serve? Also, the worker in your system gets all the return. Great. Now they have some money and they buy a truck. But now they own capital, the truck and hopefully some cash left over. Must they lend it to someone else without return? I dunno, but they might not be happy with that!

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

>the only ones who do anything valuable are the workers? Correct! Because the act of creation is where value is created. By definition capital does not create value, otherwise there would be no requirement to have labor to do the “transformation.” Exactly to your point I have at points had quite a bit of money (not currently true). But it’s not from “capital growth” it’s from aggressively selling my labor and capturing the majority of my labor value. That said, if you were to compare the amount of value, I’ve created to the amount of money I received, It’s not even fucking close I’ve created 1000x more value than I have captured. Why? because at the time that I did those deals, I was not in a powerful enough position to demand the value capture, because we’re stuck in a state where the vast majority of people need to debase themselves simply to survive. Is that the type of system that has long term capacity for multigenerational equitable success? The answer is no and there’s no way you can slice that that makes it a yes. If, however, your goal is a infinite race to the bottom for worker self exploitation, where people will literally destroy themselves in order to otherwise survive, based on the whims of hoarded capital owners arbitrary self inflated egos about how the world works. Having been a LP in a venture fund, a Director in a large public company, and a multitime start up founder I can guarantee this is exactly how it works. If that’s the world you want then we’re right on track.

wolverine876 3y ago
Well, I wouldn't go nearly as far as you do, but I do appreciate your up front, clear argument for your point. My perception is that the labor/capital allocation of return is far out of whack, due to a power imbalance. But I feel you still aren't accounting for the value of capital. It's too easy an answer, intellectually, just to dismiss the whole thing and ignore the complication. Production requires capital and labor. If I lend you my truck for your contracting service, shouldn't I get some return on that? What if you use my property to manufacture your skateboard (or whatever)? What if I give you some of my personal cash to hire workers, who then produce the skateboards, which you sell at a profit? I know these are simple, chosen examples, but where do you see the problem and how do you quantify appropriate returns?
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  No, you did nothing. Why would you get anything? Holding keys to a cache of goods isn’t a skill. Even if you claim to have thought really really hard about when to open the vault, the simple act of hoarding less, does not transform the goods into value. The fact of hoarding, crowds out others use of the resource (reducing monetary velocity) so that means for people who want to make more, the choices made for when to open the vault are solely dependent on an mathematically unequitable distribution of the resultant created goods, in effect stealing directly from the people making value. To be clear I’m not making the Labor Theory of Value argument - I’m simply demonstrating that by capitals own standard (increase in value based on capital labor mix) capital should get no excess return. In fact the only argument capitialists have left is the contract and this is the Mises style MaximumCapitalist like Hans Hoppe. The argument goes that as long as a contract is signed, there cannot be anything unethical.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    If we simplify away the personal issue of 'that's my truck; you'll have to pay me to use it' - we forget property rights and the psychological attachment to property, which I don't think is realistic or wise. (Also, I've recently been reading about 'cultural universals' - behaviors in all/most/many unrelated cultures through time and geography that are not biologically determined (as far as we know) - and property is one of them.) I'm sure you know the next issue: How in your system is capital efficiently allocated? The issue is not hoarding (or not necessarily), it's natural scarcity of capital. How do we decide who gets to use the truck or the property, etc.? We know the capitalist method of allocation, which is rather productive in aggregate. Other methods have been unproductive, broadly speaking. First come first serve? Also, the worker in your system gets all the return. Great. Now they have some money and they buy a truck. But now they own capital, the truck and hopefully some cash left over. Must they lend it to someone else without return? I dunno, but they might not be happy with that!