Occupy Wall Street: The Movement Grows

[georgephillip]

The craftsman is labor.
The hammer is capital.
You're the fool.

George, you're being an idiot because you cannot support your foolish claims.

Labor produces nothing of it's own accord.

In the same sense that land produces nothing of its own accord?

What are the factors of production in your economy?

 

[Uncensored2008]

In the same sense that land produces nothing of its own accord?

Correct.

What are the factors of production in your economy?

Knowledge and materials - in all endeavors.

 

[Big Fitz]

The craftsman is labor.
The hammer is capital.
You're the fool.

George, you're being an idiot because you cannot support your foolish claims.

Labor produces nothing of it's own accord.

Unless they are also the entrepreneur.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Unless they are also the entrepreneur.

Labor as a verb, not a noun.

What I explained to George is that digging a hole in the middle of the desert is labor, but produces nothing. Labor is a tool, used correctly it can be productive, but it is the mind directing the labor that creates value.

A mindless brute swinging a sledge hammer will never create a computer, regardless of the effort put forth. It is the mind that creates. Often the mind must use labor as a tool to manifest what it conceives, but the conception is where value is born.

 

[Big Fitz]

Unless they are also the entrepreneur.

Labor as a verb, not a noun.

What I explained to George is that digging a hole in the middle of the desert is labor, but produces nothing. Labor is a tool, used correctly it can be productive, but it is the mind directing the labor that creates value.

A mindless brute swinging a sledge hammer will never create a computer, regardless of the effort put forth. It is the mind that creates. Often the mind must use labor as a tool to manifest what it conceives, but the conception is where value is born.

ah. Verbiage trouble. gotcha.

So this is apropos for George:

 

[georgephillip]

la bor (noun)

(1) human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy.
(2) the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits.
(4) an economic group comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages.

Labor - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 

[Katzndogz]

How long will labor work without capital to pay them?

 

[georgephillip]

How long will labor work without capital to pay them?

Not long.

Land, labor and capital are the three classic factors of production.
Entrepreneurship is probably another.
But there is also the cultural inheritance of mankind to consider:

"Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization..."

Language and Mathematics would be two prime examples of this collective inheritance.
It can be thought of as a universal commons of knowledge that all humanity is entitled to share equally in.
It is where the money would come from for things like universal health care and free education if the richest 1% of humanity did not control all governments.

 

[Uncensored2008]

la bor (noun)

(1) human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy.
(2) the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits.
(4) an economic group comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages.

Labor - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

labor
verb
to devote serious and sustained effort <he labored most of the day over the difficult legal brief>

Labor[verb] - Synonyms and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

We have been discussing the verb, not the noun - as you know.

The group known as labor is a different proposition than the act of labor.

 

[georgephillip]

I thought we were discussing the factor of production known as labor.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I thought we were discussing the factor of production known as labor.

Which would be the verb - to labor.

 

[georgephillip]

I thought we were discussing the factor of production known as labor.

Which would be the verb - to labor.

In addition to:

"labor

"... (1) : the human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy

(2) : the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits.

Labor - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Are you confusing labor with work done?

"In a more special and technical sense, however, labour means any valuable service rendered by a human agent in the production of wealth, other than accumulating and providing capital or assuming the risks that are a normal part of business undertakings. It includes the services of manual labourers, but it covers many other kinds of services as well. It is not synonymous with toil or exertion, and it has only a remote relation to 'work done' in the physical or physiological senses. The application of the physical energies of people to the work of production is, of course, an element in labour, but skill and self-direction, within a larger or smaller sphere, are also elements..."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/326796/labour

 

[skookerasbil]

I thought we were discussing the factor of production known as labor.

Which would be the verb - to labor.

In addition to:

"labor

"... (1) : the human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy

(2) : the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits.

Labor - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Are you confusing labor with work done?

"In a more special and technical sense, however, labour means any valuable service rendered by a human agent in the production of wealth, other than accumulating and providing capital or assuming the risks that are a normal part of business undertakings. It includes the services of manual labourers, but it covers many other kinds of services as well. It is not synonymous with toil or exertion, and it has only a remote relation to 'work done' in the physical or physiological senses. The application of the physical energies of people to the work of production is, of course, an element in labour, but skill and self-direction, within a larger or smaller sphere, are also elements..."

labour (economics) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD..............

This is what you get when they let the professional student off campus!! All these elitist acedemics spend their lives philosophising for the gay.


Shit.........I remember getting w0wed too by The German Ideology. Oh about 32 years ago now..........fascinating shit, but most people recognized their folly at some point, which is why you have the 21%ers = the ones who remain romanticized by that shit until they go to the box.

 

[georgephillip]

Which would be the verb - to labor.

In addition to:

"labor

"... (1) : the human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy

(2) : the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits.

Labor - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Are you confusing labor with work done?

"In a more special and technical sense, however, labour means any valuable service rendered by a human agent in the production of wealth, other than accumulating and providing capital or assuming the risks that are a normal part of business undertakings. It includes the services of manual labourers, but it covers many other kinds of services as well. It is not synonymous with toil or exertion, and it has only a remote relation to 'work done' in the physical or physiological senses. The application of the physical energies of people to the work of production is, of course, an element in labour, but skill and self-direction, within a larger or smaller sphere, are also elements..."

labour (economics) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD..............

This is what you get when they let the professional student off campus!! All these elitist acedemics spend their lives philosophising for the gay.


Shit.........I remember getting w0wed too by The German Ideology. Oh about 32 years ago now..........fascinating shit, but most people recognized their folly at some point, which is why you have the 21%ers = the ones who remain romanticized by that shit until they go to the box.

Is this The German Ideology you were reading?

"The German Ideology (German: Die Deutsche Ideologie) is a book written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels around April or early May 1846. Marx and Engels did not find a publisher. However, the work was later retrieved and published for the first time in 1932 by David Riazanov through the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow..."

The German Ideology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Are you now or have you ever been a Marxist?

 

[Big Fitz]

How long will labor work without capital to pay them?

Simply answered by asking someone to dig ditches for a stranger without benefit of pay.

If they say yes, they're a bonifide idiot.

If they say no, they're a normal person.

If they demand outrageous pay for short hours and many breaks with no means testing for quality, a grievance procedure, paid weeks off, gold plated healthcare plans and a pension that allows them to retire on 90% pay at age 55, they're a liberal union member.

 

[georgephillip]

"Harvard Students Join the Movement
by Richard D. Wolff

"Over the last 10 days, Harvard students twice stopped business as usual at this richest of all US private universities. An Occupy Harvard encampment of tents followed a large march of many hundreds through the campus protesting Harvard's complicity in the nation's extreme inequality of income and wealth.

"A week earlier some 70 students walked out in protest of Harvard's large lecture course in introductory economics.

"They too explained that they were acting in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements.

"They specifically criticized the narrowly biased economics they were learning that both reflected and reinforced the inequalities and injustices that fuel the OWS movements. The walkout in the economics lecture deserves our special attention

"That walkout responds to (1) the quality of capitalist development in the US for the last quarter century, (2) the complicity of university economics departments in systematically hiding or rationalizing that development, and (3) the new space and support for long-overdue criticism of capitalism opened by the OWS movements.

Celebrating capitalism is not the same thing as studying capitalism.
Richard D. Wolff, "Harvard Students Join the Movement"

 

[editec]

Unless they are also the entrepreneur.

Labor as a verb, not a noun.

It's both.

What I explained to George is that digging a hole in the middle of the desert is labor, but produces nothing. Labor is a tool, used correctly it can be productive, but it is the mind directing the labor that creates value.

Thinking is a form of labor.

A mindless brute swinging a sledge hammer will never create a computer, regardless of the effort put forth. It is the mind that creates. Often the mind must use labor as a tool to manifest what it conceives, but the conception is where value is born.

You're creating an artifical distinction between labor of body and labor of the mind.

Both represent human labor.

 

[Bern80]

You're creating an artifical distinction between labor of body and labor of the mind.

Both represent human labor.

Yes they are both labor, but the distinction remains important. Because there is this misconception that simply putting forth hard work, which can take the form of manual labor or even putting in many hours at a desk, should yield ever increasing levels of income. That simply isn't the case. Getting ahead financially isn't about simply working hard. It's about working smart.

 

[Uncensored2008]

It's both.

You figured that out, did you?

Thinking is a form of labor.

Perhaps, but not in common parlance.

You're creating an artifical distinction between labor of body and labor of the mind.

I'm illustrating that labor is neither noble nor useful without purpose.

The Marxian idiocy of the intrinsic value of labor is a fallacy.

Both represent human labor.

Not in the Marxian sense - Marx worshiped physical labor, toil.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Yes they are both labor, but the distinction remains important. Because there is this misconception that simply putting forth hard work, which can take the form of manual labor or even putting in many hours at a desk, should yield ever increasing levels of income. That simply isn't the case. Getting ahead financially isn't about simply working hard. It's about working smart.

And about achieving results. What I tried to get George to grasp is that effort has no value - results are what has value, regardless of the effort that went into them.