John, Binary productiveness is an analysis of the PHYSICAL contributions to production. Fish breed and grow without human intervention and that is a physical fact.
But not an economic one. the fish aren't food until you catch them. Only then do questions of production and consumption come into play. The ocean is prior to all that, and independent of any theory about it.
And trees grow. That is a physical fact. And automatic machines act automatically. That is a physical fact.
No, they don't. That is a physical fact. The tree grows by itself, but on the automatic elevator, you still have to push the button, still have to have control and maintenance facilitaties, financial infrastructures, etc. That is the fact.
And Keith Wilde has conceded these matters
Oh, pul-leeeze. No one has ever denied the contribution of capital.
And the hydro-electric dam? Do you still wish to ignore the fact of the physical contribution to wealth creation that the sun, weather, gravity, water, concrete and turbines make?
Are you still maintaining that these are capital items? Who owns them?
And it has been observed that Marx most certainly understood all this
Everybody understands all that; it is not a subject of debate. But neither is it "productiveness" theory.
-- se= e pages 114-115 of the A/S book.
As regards the independence of non-human things in phsyical production, consider first the human who is also an independent contributor acting by her/himself, or co-operating with others or co-operating with things like machines, seeds, trees, fish, mines, oil wells etc etc -- non-human capital=
assets. You don't deny the independence of human beings, do you?
Actually, I do, but that's another subject.
But that=
does NOT mean to say that they cannot co-operate in a thousdand different ways - with each other or with non-human capital assets -- does it? And it's the same with the non-human capital assets.
Whoops! Not so fast. You jumped from human cooperation to non-human cooperation. When do we see this? I don't see driverless trucks deciding to transport fish to Philadelphia. Those are all things done by humans who use the trucks, and without whom the trucks have no value whatsoever, and hence no "independent productivity." You cannot give us a single example of "independently productive" wealth in any economic terms. Yes, nature is bountiful--no one disputes this--but until somebody farms it, that bounty remains beyond our reach.
They do their work by themselves,
Where? You keep saying this, but produce no actual examples. All the examples you produce are things that are operated by humans, without whom the "asset" has neither meaning nor value.
or linked with other non-human assets or linked with humans in thousand of different ways. Like humans, their independnence is recognised=
by payment for contribution to production -- although whether present recognition is an accurate recognition is another matter.
Yes, that's at the heart of your theory, which is why it simply won't work. Payment will be by (at best case) marginal productivity, not independent productiveness. Such a theory can be used perfectly to justify the oppression of the poor. "We give them the jobs and the capital assets, without which they would produce very little, so we, as owners, are entitled to most of the output." Hence, your argument isn't new. It is the argument of every subsistence wage employer back to Adam.
You ask if it would matter if b.e.quietly dropped the concept of independen= t productiveness. In response, I would ask why, if people genuinely wish substantial capital ownership for ALL individuals, they feel an obvious nee= d to attack something which points out capital's big physical contribution to=
wealth production.
Straw man. Not one person, left, right, center, denies the contribution of capital. They may deny your allocation of benefits but that is another matter.
The answer is obvious -- they attack the one thing whic= h defeats the present line of conventional economics that nothing need be changed and that it does not matter who owns the capital.
Independent productiveness doesn't accomplish that, since prices and wages will continue to be set by marginal productivity. The supplier who attempted to use your theory would just go broke in short order, and that would be that.
Yes, conventiona= l economics has woven into it that it does not matter who owns the capital
That's true, but independent productiveness strengthens the arguments of the owners, not weakens them. All you do is justify their low wages. Conventional economics fails repeatedly because it does not take distributions into account. But your account will only make those distributions worse.
(and on a New York TV programme with me, Edward Wolff confirmed that). Thus, in practice, one way or another, most economists -- and you -- end up=
in practice supporting the status quo. It happens becasue, all the time, they are subtly supporting the status quo arguments. You refuse to allow the physical contribution of capital to production and so play the game of the big capital owners who say "Oh labour does most of it, in fact. does it=
all,
Ah, now *which* big capitalist makes that claim? This should be interesting.
The truth is, no one is going to abandon marginal productivity and stay in business; therefore, you fail before you begin. BE, I believe, can be reconciled with standard economics, but not if you maintain the myth of "independent productivity."
John C. M�daille
"A dead thing can go with the stream...
but only a living thing can go against it."
-G. K. Chesterton
http://www.medaille.com/distributivism.htm
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