Re: What do workers compete for?

On Mon, 17 May 2004 10:28:40 GMT, "Robert J. Kolker"
<robert_kolker@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Mark Monson wrote:
>> 
>> The same committee that decides what a dog is.
>> 
>> You're a piece of work, Bob.   Thanks for the morning chuckle.
>
>Seriously now. Why isn't land reclaimed from the sea (as the Dutch do) 
>by outlays of capital, lots of clever technology and just plain hard 
>work a product?

Improvements made to land are always products of labor.

>It is not a free gift of nature like the air we breath.

The original land under the water was.  That's why reclamation is
feasible in some places, but not in others.
 
>Refusal to call that kind a land a product reflects an indeological 
>bias.

Land is not a product.  The Dutch did not create their polder land.
It was already there, just covered by the sea.  They _improved_ it by
diking and draining it, but they did not _create_ it thereby.  Refusal
to know that fact reflects an ideological bias.

>It is one of the articles of faith of the Georgies and the LVT 
>evangelists.

No, it is true by definition.

>These religious -fanatics- have to have an explanation of 
>social and economic inequality.

Lie.  The issue is systematic, institutional injustice, not inequality
of result.

Landowner privilege is a systematic injustice like slavery.  However,
few people are able to understand this, because it is subtler and more
complex than slavery.  Like LVT advocates, the abolitionists were not
advocating equality of result.  They, like LVT advocates, were
advocating abolition of an _institution_ that systematically denied
people liberty, justice, and equality of _op****tunity_.

>Blame it on the rent seekers.

Lie.  Rent seekers are just responding to incentives.  LVT advocates
blame the incentives, not the rent seekers.

>Blame it on the capitlists.

LVT advocates typically agree that workers and true capitalists (those
whose investments enhance production) are on the same side: victims of
robbery for the unearned benefit of landowners.

>Blame it on the plutocrats.

Those who seek to maintain an unjust system by which they benefit
certainly deserve to be blamed for the injustice it inflicts on
others.

>Blame it on inherited wealth.

Inherited wealth is irrelevant to the issue, except insofar as it
tends to magnify the effects of the unjust system over time.

>Why not blame it on the fact that we are not all clones from the 
>same egg?

Because that is not the source of the injustice we seek to end.

>If God wanted us to be kind to each other He would have fixed 
>it so we could feel another's pain as vividly as we feel our own.

Most of us _do_ have a capacity to feel bad when we _cause_ pain to
others.  It's called, "conscience."  Sociopaths lack that capacity.

-- Roy L