Re: OWNERSHIP: Kurland's Con Game

[John Médaille <john@medaille.com>]

At 11:50 PM 6/26/2005 +0100, Rodney Shakespeare wrote:

>Because of the conflict between a self-evident identity and reality, Say's 
>Law (or rather, Theorem) has been the subject of great controversy for 
>over 175 years.  And it will remain a subject of controversy while people 
>have the fundamental misconception that labor creates most of the wealth.

You're right. Labor does not create MOST wealth; it creates ALL wealth. At 
least, no one has ever been able to show a single dollar in the history of 
the world created by capital alone. Of course, in the course of producing 
wealth labor consumes capital and capital multiplies the power of labor to 
produce wealth. But the capital itself regresses to labor and land. Capital 
by itself produces nothing; the truck in the parking lot has no 
independently productive powers; until a driver gets behind the wheel, it 
is static. This is simply the correct *empirical* description; one should 
always start with the correct descriptions, and then let their theories 
take them where they will.

>It really is tempting fate for Bill to use phrases like "con game" in 
>respect of binary economics because it is now getting a big welcome 
>in  international conferences and is making good progress in the 
>university teaching world -- the first teaching has just taken place in a 
>prestigious Indonesian university -- and  it is likely to be soon taught 
>in other universities.

I also teach it at the University of Dallas--with some critical 
disclaimers, of course.


John C. Médaille

"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
john@medaille.com

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