RE: OWNERSHIP: The Labor theory of value

[John Médaille <john@medaille.com>]

At 04:40 PM 7/3/2005 -0400, Ed Dodson wrote:
>Ed Dodson responding...
>John Medaille wrote:
> >
> >Ed Dodson here:
> >Bill, I would add a something of a clarifying condition that the parties
> >engaged in the exchange are satisified they have received an equal value in
> >the exchange. Certainly, third parties (e.g., economists or priests) might
> >not have made the same deal, but that is an individual decision. The most
> >important aspect to the exchange is the absence of coercion, of force.
>
>JOHN MEDAILLE: No one would knowingly and voluntarily exchange the greater
>for the lesser;
>such transactions always involve fraud or coercion. ...
>
>Ed Dodson here:
>Exchange of goods between two societies with vastly differing technologies
>will result in one feeling the exchange is equal, the other feeling they got
>the better of the other. Think, for example, in terms of the early period of
>traders in North America who came to the indigenous tribes with
>European-made goods the tribes were not able to produce themselves. The
>traders came away with enormous profits (compensation, perhaps, for the
>risks attached to doing business in the wilderness with people who might
>decide to end the traders life if they felt they were slighted or taken
>advantage of.

Wouldn't that simply be the result of monopoly pricing, a form of coercion?


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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