Dear All,
The title of this thread is "Sun, cow, fish, machine, hydroelectric dam,
internet" and, in my previous email, I have added plant, self-closing door=
and lorry. I invited all members of this list to consider these things and=
thank John Medaille for replying.
John Medaille says it is "strange" to attribute independent productiveness
to these things and his saying so is very understandable -- it IS strange t=
o
people who are inculcated, impressed, educated, trained (it is not their
fault) with the labour theory of value and the congealed labour theory.
But take the sun -- are we to say it is anything other than independent?
Are we to say that the cow makes no contribution to the production of milk=
,
meat and leather? Are we to deny that sea fish breed and become a food
stock without us doing anything? Are we to deny the massive increase in
output when we use a machine to do a job? And when I telephone somebody
in the USA, are we to claim that it is MY cleverness and MY skill that
enables me to communicate across the Atlantic? Come off it! Pressing a fe=
w
telephone buttons hardly counts as a productive contribution.
The fact is that binary economics is a new paradigm --a new way of
understanding reality. Binary economics points out what others (all these=
fine Austrian minds, for example) choose to neglect, contort or deny.
John asks if the lorry can refuse to be driven (and still be a lorry
carrying, say, 200 sacks for 200 miles, i.e. 40,000 sack/miles per day).
Of course not! A human can refuse to use the lorry if he wishes but --
certainly in my case-- that will reduce the sack/miles per day to a lot
under one. The work ratio is 40,000 to one. There's much more to all this=
than just the driver and the lorry -- there's the road, for example, and th=
e
petrol/gas. But, as is stated in another email from me, the difficulty in
being completely precise about the contribution of the lorry does not mean
that it makes no contribution and that the human does it all. Rather it
means that we should make a sensible judgement of the matter. The
productiveness analysis is not always precise (although in some cases, it
is) but it most certainly helps people to understand that non-human things
really do make a big contribution to wealth creation.
John also appears to have a problem in thinking of humans as independent
producers who co-operate with each other and with non-human things. Yet if=
they are not independent then, presumably, they are co-operating.
This sort of confusion arises because of an unwillingness to allow that
non-human things, (and humans) make a contribution to wealth creation.
John says that binary economists think of humans as machines. That is =
a
silly statement and it arises, as in the confusion above, from an
unwillingness to admit that non-human things make a big contribution to the=
creation of wealth.
Rodney Shakespeare.
----- Original Message -----
From: "John M=E9daille" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Social Credit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 4:54 AM
Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Sun, cow, fish, machine, hydroelectric dam,
internet
At 10:55 AM 7/18/2003 +0100, Rodney Shakespeare wrote:
> and then kindly say whether or not they have an independent
> productiveness (even though they can co-operate with humans and humans
> can co-operate with them just as other independent producers (humans )
> co-operate with other humans and with productive capital).
I think that's a strange way to put it: "even though [dams and lorries]
*can* co-operate with humans..." (emphasis added). The obvious question is,=
"can they refuse to cooperate with humans and still be productive?" IOW,
can they be "independently" productive? Can the lorry drive itself? Can you=
attribute to inert matter a "productiveness" that only appears when it is
intentionally utilized by man and still call that productivity
"independent"?
The strangeness of the language continues (and it is but one sentence
packed with what seems to me to be so much strangeness) when you seem to
equate these "independently productive" lories with "other" independent
producers, i.e., "humans." There some to be a strange confusion of the man
and the machine; you seem to have animated the inanimate, and mechanized
the man, a sort of Binary version of the Terminator.
I have little doubt of the sincere desire of the binarians to liberate man,=
but I little think you will accomplish that my treating him (even
rhetorically) like a machine.
John C. M=E9daille
www.medaille.com/distributivism.htm
Amor ipse notitia est.
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