RE: OWNERSHIP: The Labor theory of value

["Ed Dodson" <ejdodson@comcast.net>]

Ed Dodson responding...
John Medaille wrote:
>
>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.

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

Ed here:
Where the traders used rum or other liquor prior to the actual trading, they
were certainly guilty of theft. As to the question of monopoly pricing, this
is a more complex question. At the earliest encounters, the tribes may have
only known one trader. In the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, the French
and English competed with one another. The French goods were less expensive
but lower in quantity and quality than those provided by the English
traders. However, the French traders, as you are surely aware, lived with
and were adopted by tribes, took wifes in the tribe and spoke their
languages, etc. Thus, the trading relationships were complex. One of the
most successful merchant-traders of the early to mid-1700s was an Irish
immigrant named William Johnson. Johnson was unique: he refused to sell
liquor to the tribes (although he would invite them to pre-trading feasts
and provide rum; trading the next day when they were sober); he paid more
for what he got than other traders; and, he made a real effort to learn the
culture and language of the tribes he traded with. He was rewarded for his
honesty by attracting trade from tribes far into the interior. He was
adopted in the Mohawk tribe and was instrumental in keeping the Iroquois
League allied to the English during the Seven Years' War. And, by the way,
during his lifetime he managed to become a major landowner in the Mohawk
Valley.



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