> a limited resource, like land, and profit from it. Shouldn't the exclusive control over a limited resource Capital makes money by unpaid labor. A woodshop i

> a limited resource, like land, and profit from it. Shouldn't the exclusive control over a limited resource Capital makes money by unpaid labor. A woodshop is inherited by an heir. The carpenter comes in and creates furniture - let us say tables. The material for the table - wood, screws, varnish etc. cost $80. This would also include other costs - if a saw blade costs $100 but is good for 100 tables, then that 1/100 of a sawblade ($1) is included in the $80. The table sells for $100 in a store attached to the woodshop. So all totalled inputs are $80, and the labor from the carpenter produces $20 of wealth per table. The carpenter produces two tables an hour, and works for eight hours a day. So the carpenter creates $320 worth of value a day. The carpenter keeps all the wealth he creates for the first six hours a day - his daily take home pay is $240. However, the carpenter is not paid for his labor for the last two hours a day. He is working for free, with all wealth generated going to the heir. This is surplus value he is generating, which is expropriated by the heir. This is where the profit comes from. All modern rentier wealth is generated through these means. In the case of farmland, it is similar to the woodshop and carpenters, except we have workers, mostly of Mexican descent, working unpaid at the end of the day picking fruit in the Central Valley for those who took control of the land after Commodore John Sloat sailed his warships into Monterey Bay in the 1840s. If the farmowner rents houses to the braceros, it is the same process, just one but removed. The landlord is not working for rent, the person doing the work to create the wealth is still the renter, it is just one level of abstraction. Usury is similar - moneylenders don't work for the wealth - they collect interest from those who do. Ultimately the value of all commodities derive from the work needed to create it. It doesn't take a lot of effort to collect and commoditize rainwater, so water is cheap. To find and mine gold takes more effort, so it is more expensive. The social relationship of expropriation of unpaid time is what is important. It is all social relationships. There are no signs pointing down from the heavens saying who owns what. If it did, the farmland taken in California at gunpoint would belong to the Indians and Mexicans who lived there, not the heirs of that thest 175 years ago. With the profits derived from the labor of fruit-pickers, the theft continues to this day. As it does in the air-conditioned offices of Kifer Road and Market Street.