Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 19:08:35 +0000
To: wiltbanks, Holts
From: [email protected]
Subject: Why Not "Capital Day"?
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To this article I'm sending, I would add that the real meaning and source of "capital", or money, is the human mind. It is man's genius; found in individuals left free and independent to think and create for themselves; that has made man "rich", i.e. made his life valuable. Ask yourself what has been different about the last 400 years than the preceeding thousands of years of "same old"? Time travel to 1,000 A.D., then to 3,000 B.C. and you would not be able to tell the difference. Why not? What was everyone doing all that time? Even now, much of the world is still caught in the "same old". What is different about the ones that are not?
The Renaissance's discovery of increased respect for individual sovereignty and disrespect for state sovereignty is the only difference. Government power took on a less absolute nature. And the more powerless and penniless the government was, and the more absolute and sacred private property rights were held to be, the better off its citizens became. Strange, eh? But no one can really own Mother Earth can they? It's just a public trust, right? And taxation isn't slavery, it's just the cost of the social contract, right? Right? Is the lesson clear yet?
The newly freer (if not totally free, or even only middling-to-fair free) people did something interesting starting circa 1400: they created an entirely different world out of the one that existed previously. In great and exhilerating spurts, they overhauled all aspects of human life. The greatest period of invention ever in known history occurred 1870-1910 in the USA, the last years of at least semi-laissez-faire policy (airplanes, alternating current, internal combustion engine, induction motor, radio, telephone, telegraph, fridge, electric lights, cars, recorded movies, recorded sound, indoor plumbing). Nothing more substantially affects your life today than the products of that short time span. I think we could one-up those nineteenth century hacks today, if we would only free ourselves to do it. Why not? The only alternative to a libertarian society, is one of stagnation and poverty of one degree or another. That is all compulsion (see definition: government) is capable of producing. The choice is clear to me: Live Free, or Die!
Wow, my planned one or two sentence commentary is almost as long as the article now. Anyway...
Why Not Capital Day?
by SCOTT A. KJAR
[Posted September 3, 1999]
All over the United States, we celebrate Labor Day, a day dedicated to the glories of the American worker. It is the American worker who is said to be responsible for our great standard of living, and for the success of the American Dream. This argument is flawed.
For 10,000 years, from ancient Sumeria all the way up through the Industrial Revolution, labor was the key to economic organization. Agriculture was the primary economic activity, and it was based on back-breaking labor. A human with no capital at all would have to poke a hole in the ground with his finger, and drop in a seed.
The change to using stick to poke holes was an example of the development of capital. To shift from there to metal plows is an immense change, and one which is entirely capital-based. The development of a horse collar (a piece of capital) allowed for greatly increased agricultural output. Literally all the labor in the world could scarcely increase the food supply, but simple capital improvements led to substantial growth in agricultural output.
In a labor-based world, hunting animals was a precarious activity, since animals often possessed better weapons than humans did. A bare-handed human is no match for a buffalo; indeed, a human left with his own wits and his bare hands will rarely capture even a bunny. The development of animal traps was an improvement that allowed small game to be captured with minimal risk to the capturer. The use of spears was another capital improvement, allowing a group of men to successfully hunt larger animals. The invention of the firearm allowed a man to kill even the largest game at a great distance.
In a labor-based world, trade between regions required many men to take weeks, months, or even years to traverse mountains or snowy areas. Yet, this excruciating labor ended with only small amounts of trade, since the traders? (limited by their own strength and by their ability to carry food and control pack animals) could only safely and effectively control a small quantity of goods, often not more than a couple hundred pounds.
In our capital-based world, trade is handled with interstate trucking, airplanes, and huge ships with multi-ton cargo holds. Indeed, it is likely that more trade occurs in a single day in our capital-based world than occurred in any single year, any decade, or possibly even any entire century, before the Renaissance.
Today, we enjoy luxuries unimaginable even 200 years ago, much less 2000 years ago. We drive automobiles, and we have air conditioners in our homes. We use electric lights, and we mass-produce staplers. We watch television. Books that once had to be painstakingly reproduced one at a time?with labor?are now reproduced by the thousands on printing presses, or even photocopiers. Today, you can read this from the internet and printed on a home printer.
A several-hour flight between New York and London replaces a several-week voyage aboard a ship--a voyage as likely to result in death as in the safe arrival in the destination city. And the ship itself had made the trip at least possible, changing it from an impossibility in a world based solely on human labour. (Imagine swimming across the Atlantic Ocean!) A message that took Pony Express riders days to get from St. Louis to San Francisco is now handled instantaneously via computers and e-mail.
We are blessed to live in this time and place, since the American Dream is truly within reach. Of course, the Dream itself is as far away as it has always been. It's just that the expansion of capital allows us to get there faster and easier than ever before. It's time we ended this misnamed celebration of labor day, and recognized what it is that truly makes our life easier: capital.
Happy Capital Day!
John Wiltbank