{"id":23428,"date":"2011-10-10T12:30:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23428"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:49:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:49:07","slug":"an-experiment-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23428","title":{"rendered":"An Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

While at the “Occupy Minnesota” “rally” over the weekend, I saw a few signs saying that “Labor<\/strong>\u00a0Creates Wealth”.<\/p>\n

Now, I’ve got nothing against labor. \u00a0I work for a living; without someone to build things to sell, capital and management will be more or less out to dry.<\/p>\n

But does labor create <\/em>wealth?<\/p>\n

For those of you who believe this, I’m going to propose an experiment.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do some work. \u00a0Any work at all. \u00a0Dig a ditch, draw a painting, ride a bike from downtown to downtown, bake a tray of cookies, write a blog post, play guitar in the skyway, build a dog house, make your bed, it doesn’t matter. \u00a0Just do some…labor.<\/li>\n
  2. Check to see if you have gotten any “wealth” – money, food, lodging, coffee beans, green stamps, trading cards, coupons, strings of beads – by simple dint of having labored.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0I’m guessing “no”. \u00a0And without wanting to spoil the experiment, I’m going to speculate on exactly why.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Without someone willing\u00a0to pay <\/em>you something for that “labor”, the “labor” you did in #1 above was just something you did for fun (hopefully; I mean, you didn’t really expect to be paid, did you?)<\/p>\n

    And who is it that finds someone who needs, and is willing to pay for,\u00a0a ditch or a drawing or for you to ride your bike, or is hungry for cookies or your insight or your music, or needs a dog house?<\/p>\n

    Management.<\/p>\n

    Now, you <\/em>could very well be your own manager – it happens all the time.<\/p>\n

    And unless you dig with your hands, draw with your blood, inherited a bike, conjure flour and sugar and chocolate chips and butter and heat from pure mind power, can ethically blog from the library, imitate a guitar with your voice, or pound nails with your face, someone needs to “invest” in a shovel, a pencil, a bike, ingredients and a stove and gas, a computer, a guitar, and a hammer and some wood, in the hopes that they’ll generate a “return” on the investment – money or food or lodging or whatever you get for your labor. \u00a0Again – you could be the investor! \u00a0 But without someone – you, your mom, a venture capitalist, or a bank listed on the NYSE – to “invest” in making sure you have the tools you need to make sure your labor produces something to take to market, you’ll be, well, pounding nails with your face, as it were.<\/p>\n

    It’s called “Capital”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    While at the “Occupy Minnesota” “rally” over the weekend, I saw a few signs saying that “Labor\u00a0Creates Wealth”. Now, I’ve got nothing against labor. \u00a0I work for a living; without someone to build things to sell, capital and management will be more or less out to dry. But does labor create wealth? For those of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327,68,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-activism","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-days-of-adolescent-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49770,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23428\/revisions\/49770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}