Depends what you mean by value.
Actually, only labor produces Wealth.
However, if a law passes which allows me to take half the Wealth that labor produces, this privilege has value and I can sell the privilege for a useful sum.
Similarly, a privilege limits the number of cabs that may ply for hire in New York City. Legally to operate the cab, you must have a medallion. The price of the medallion is now somewhere around $200,000.
Instant value, but no Wealth.
Then there is the slave whose value is $2,000.
As Marx eventually wrote in Das Kapital, surplus value disappears into Economic Rent (Land Rent).
So, the concept has no value.
Harry
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Brad wrote:
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip]The economists' blind spot is energy. This is the free lunch.[snip] Isn't this just one aspect of Kalr Marx's observation that only human labor produces value (and, a fortiori...) surplus value? Everything else is just part of labor's (OK, management's...) smorgasbord.
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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