Reply #121: Of Course It Is, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

The standard you propose is nonesensical, and nothing but a recepie for slaveholding and other extremeties of exploitation. The value of a thing is what people will pay for it; there is no other standard possible: in a beseiged city, a two carat diamond may not be worth a couple of pouund of horsemeat, though on a glittering boulevard far away it might ciojmand many thousands of dollars. The thing that is sold in the market is the sum of all that went into it: materials, labor, the skill of the laborers, the skill of designers and directors, etc.. In all cases, the laborers receive less than the realized price of the increment their labor contributes to the price at which the product is sold: in some cases, where the designers and directors of the process and those who direct the labor are not also owners, these, two, receive a smaller increment than than their efforts contribute to the price.