Re: Property [was Re: The Education Function]

Dick.Gray@bull.com
Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:22:36 -0700

Michael Scarazzo <mscarazzo@rocketmail.com> asked Samael:
>What objects start off having value in their natural state without
>having value added to them through work (efforts of individuals)?

Samael's answer:
>Shelter, animals, land, oil, water, trees.

Not so, as you admit below:

>All opf these, while requiring some work (at least to move them to where
>they are needed if nothing else) but return a profit vastly out of line
with
>what they cost in the first place.

"... a profit vastly out of line..." In whose estimation? How do you come by your omniscience? By what criteria do you, on the sidelines, pronounce on something that depends on information that can only be known by the actual parties to a transaction (i.e. their respective marginal utilities)?

>Getting to a resource first (like
>happening to choose a plot of land above an oil field) does not seem like
a
>reasonable way to get rights to it. Rewarding hard work is fair enough
(or
>even easy work), but blind luck and force?

It's not what you find, but what you make of it, that produces real wealth.

You seem unable to appreciate the fact that wealth is generated by the mind, and doesn't exist apart from it. Far from being a static quantity waiting to be found, wealth is something we _create_ from the raw material of acquired resources. (You might say it's "all in our heads").

You also seem to forget that, for most people, most resources are acquired by trade, not by discovery.

Dick