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This is the real critique of the labor theory of value: Smith and Ricardo regarded nature as effectively infinite and the economy only being powered by people d

This is the real critique of the labor theory of value: Smith and Ricardo regarded nature as effectively infinite and the economy only being powered by people doing things. Sitting in the ground the coal has no value, when people dig it up and put it in a steam engine it goes from 0 value to the value of whatever got produced. Where did the coal in the ground come from? Don't know! How much is there? Probably a lot. What happens to the acrid smoke from the steam engine? Goes somewhere else. EDIT: because I know someone is going to insist that the value of coal in the ground is accounted for in mineral rights: there were none in Smith and Ricardo's day.

adolph 3y ago
> Smith and Ricardo regarded nature as effectively infinite Clearly Smith was aware of constraints in nature: A mine of any kind may be said to be either fertile or barren, according as the quantity of mineral which can be brought from it by a certain quantity of labour is greater or less than what can be brought by an equal quantity from the greater part of other mines of the same kind. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch11b.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/...