Reply #154: You'd think it'd be an easy question to answer. I guess not. [View All]

[TahitiNut]

I ask what moral or ethical principles support the PROFIT an owner exacts from labor. I'm not questioning compensation. I'm questioning profits above and beyond the wear and tear and consumption of a productive resource. The only answer I'm hearing is the equivalent of "might makes right."

Let's imagine this another way. A factory is built by labor. Once other workers have then used it and, by their labor, paid back the 'compensation' given to the workers who built it, what justification exists for continuing to extract "vigorish" from those workers?

I guess most folks would agree that there's a question of how much of a percentage the owners of productive capital should take from the value of the labor above and beyond the cost of the capital used up, but I wonder how that question can even begin to be answered unless we understand the basis for it being greater than zero at all.

I sometimes think we're so accustomed to saying "of course" that we've never even figured out why.