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Ed Dodson repsonding...
Adavans wrote:
John Medaille
wrote:"I agree. And so does Smith. That doesn't change the empirical
fact that all values--without a single exception--are traceable to labor
and the natural
gifts of the land. Period. Some will chime in "capital" and
they will be
correct. But capital itself regresses to labor and the
natural gifts of the
land. As for other sources of value, there are
precisely zero."
ADAVANS: Perhaps
what we should be entertaining here is a labor theory of
property along the lines proposed by David
Ellerman. Of course much capital has ceased having a direct connection to
the generations of labor that first brought it into existence, and so can be
regarded as being part of humanity's cultural inheritance, which some
might regard as being a form of socially-held wealth, or a commons of
wealth.
Ed Dodson here:
As I have already provided my views in
support of the "labor (and capital goods) theory of property" I will
await your comments, if any.
I am reminded by this idea of
"humanity's cultural inheritance" of the writings of economist Eugen Loebl
and Gerald R. Zoffer. Zoffer's book, *Economic Sanity or Collapse"
(McGraw-Hill, 1980), is a hard-hitting attack on interventionist government and
conventional economic thinking. He states:
"The problem, then, begins with the way in
which conventional economists think about the economy. It is, frankly, bankrupt
thinking in that it regards the economy simply as the allocation of scarce
resources, and economics as the science that studies this process."
(p.105)
"They delude themselves that economics is a
'hard' science, even though the distinguished economist, Gunnar Myrdal, ...has
written that economics [is] a 'soft' science in which social and
political events disturb any attempt at scientific precision."
(p.106)
Zoffer's book is worth reading, just for the overview
and critical evaluation of the history of economic thought. Then, as he gets to
his (and Loebel's) proposals, he introduces the concept of "gain," in which he
expresses the view that the idea that labor is the source of a nation's wealth
is a myth. To support his assertion, he writes:
"The ability to transform natural resources into
productive use has become awesomely efficient thanks to the application of
higher levels of thinking where applied science creates 'energy slaves,' that
is, where nature contributes its share of the productive process free of
charge." (p.253)
"Involved in this process is a much greater output than
there is input. The difference between the two is social 'gain,' a phenomenon
that has remained hidden because it cannot be quantified and is therefore of no
interest to conventional economists who deal in numbers and equations in the
style of the natural scientists."
"It is gain that is the true source of a nation's
wealth."
This is just an introduction, but you get the idea.
Zoffer is also a proponent of using government to put
zero-interest money into the economy to be "used for productive purposes and
would be repaid." (p.275) He does not discuss the origin of his ideas on credit.
If enough of you have an interest, I can scan in these last few chapters and
send you text documents to read thru for later
comment/discussion.
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