Re: Labor theory of cost

Michael L. Coburn <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have given up on ever actually communicating with utility
freaks about the _real_ value theory as opposed to the Marx
Communist Manifesto. So I have decided to take a different
approach to the problem:

It is axiomatic that natural resources have NO COST.

Well, true, apart from bringing them to market, that is.

The
stuff simply exists. The abbreviation for natural resource
is "land". Now then: I will define something here called
"goods" and I will say that all "goods" (as distinct from
"land") are a product of land and labor (labor of course
is human effort).

Googds can also be the product of other goods combined with labor, but
your point is valid.

If land is free, i.e. it has no cost,
then the total cost of any "good" is the labor expended in
its creation. This observation holds true for ALL goods,
whether we speak of capital goods, durable goods, or comsumable
goods, or red, green, purple, orange, tall, short, or fat
goods. So if the cost of "capital" (i.e. capital goods) is
the labor expended in the creation of same, and it certainly
seems that this would be true, then the cost of every thing
that will ever be, other than land (which we have agreed has
no cost),

For an initital land appropriator in a world where land is still
plentiful (ie. where population is low or widespread exploration (or in
the case of resources like, say, ore - prospecting) has not commenced),
land can indeed be said to be free. When land turns scarce, ie. when
it's more or less all taken, then it becomes expensive to acquire.

is therefore the sum of labor expended in
creation. And while the neoconomist may screech that value
is subjective, we find that cost isn't. Cost is anywhere and
everywhere the labor to produce that which is desired.

Of course, the value of labor varies with a number of difference
factors.

--
regards , Peter B. P.
http://titancity.com/blog , http://macplanet.dk
.

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