[chii]

> The father away you are from value production, generally the better off you are.

you are only counting the human labour involved in the creation of value.

what about the capital?

Would you, as a hired gold miner, be able to accept zero pay for your work, until the gold is sold (then you got the full price of the sold gold)? What if you starved between the time you mined it, and the time it takes to sell? And how would you have gotten the equipment to do the mining in the first place, let alone the ownership of the mine.

[digdugdirk]

I'm not sure what you're arguing for/against with this line of reasoning.

The previous statement was in regards to the extraction of value - modern markets are such that the best(/fastest/easiest/etc) way to make money is to be at the top of the value chain and let your capital do the work. This is a self-reinforcing feedback loop, enabling you to use your increasing gains to find other forms of leverage (in your example - buying the mine and the equipment, setting up commodity trading positions, etc) and keep on ratcheting up the leverage. One inevitable outcome is for you to have the opportunity to use this leverage against the people doing the actual digging up of the gold.

[ironmagma]

No, but also that wouldn’t be possible because you can’t give 100% of the value to the miner or else the mining operation will cease due to the lack of overhead (supervisors, salesmen, equipment). The starvation argument is pointless, a lot of people get paid with commission and they survive. Also I’m not even saying there’s an alternative to the current system so what are you on about?

[NullifyNAN]

The equipment was constructed by workers. The mine was constructed by workers. The food to feed the workers was produced by workers. The gold was sold by workers.

If value was derived from capital itself, then a pile of tools or machines would spontaneously generate wealth without the application of human labor, and idle money in a bank would somehow enrich society.

[guerrilla]

Capital is also produced by labor... so the aane thing applies to those workers except to a more extreme degree.