Re: Capital Includes Goods in Stock - NOT!

From: The Trucker (mikcob_at_verizon.net)
Date: 09/15/04 

Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:36:30 -0700

royls@telus.net wrote:

> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 01:11:28 -0400, "Mark Monson" <m_monson@ztech.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Consumer goods are capital until they reach the hands of the consumer.
>
> Yet capital is supposed to be a production factor. If consumer goods
> are a production factor, it is because they help the worker to
> maintain and exercise his productive powers. So it would seem they
> are also capital when in the hands of workers.

Pretty soon you two will be claiming that Peter Pan, Santa, and my
imagination are capital. The best definition of capital will preclude
all of this "inventory" crap and comsumer goods crap and stick to
the "tools" and the structures and that's it. A computer on display
in a retail store is capital. All the computers that still reside
in the boxes are not. Stuff in boxes is called inventory; an inventory
of consumer goods. And it does not matter if they are on the shelf,
in the back of the store, or in a warehouse. They are still NOT capital
regardless of what Henry George might want, and regardless of what any
of you might want. You are attempting to legitimize a return to
hoarding called _RENT_ and to brand the return to such hoarding as
interest. I see you there, weaving your little "gold deserves to be
paid interest" web.

>>Production doesn't stop with assembly of computers. The driver of the
>>truck hauling
>>computers is taking part in computer production. The salesman at the
>>electronics
>>store is a producer of computers. Production includes all the labor that
>>goes into bringing goods to consumers.
>
> All obvious, and all irrelevant.
>
>>Capital includes all the physical wealth that aids in
>>the production process.
>
> Then it also includes consumer goods in workers' hands.

No. Comsumer goods are not capital unless you are talking about demonstrator
models of those free samples in the grocery store designed to get you
to taste the product so that you will buy it.

>>Computers in stock in the local electronics store aid in
>>the timely delivery (production) of computers to consumers. It is thus
>>consistent to class goods in the distribution pipeline as capital.
>
> And goods in workers' hands.
>
> IMO you are obscuring the vital difference between capital and wealth,
> in order to maintain a spurious distinction between interest and
> usury.

Goods in a store room, in a closet, on a shelf, or in the back of a truck
are simply "goods" and can serve as a store of wealth or you can actually
call them wealth or savings or whatever. But such piles of stored up
labor are NOT capital unless they are being phisically depreciated by
virtue of use in the process of marketing. e.g. the floor demo unit
will be sold as _used_ and in this case it will be OK to refer to this
particular unit as _capital_. 

-- 
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but
the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough
to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy
is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson.  http://GreaterVoice.org

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