[WendyTheWillow]

If Jimmy turns a piece of wood and some graphite into a pencil, he has created value. That didn't require exploiting the lumberjack or the miner. Jimmy did not steal value from either. He created value by inventing a new way for their raw materials to be useful to other people. Jimmy didn't need to "stand atop" anyone to do this.

What's "pathetic" are the ad hominems and insults the people in this thread have to resort to when they can't argue like adults. You're not right because you're angry, and you weaken your advocacy by trying to use your frustration as leverage over people giving reasoned arguments.

[yawpitch]

If Jimmy only ever prototyped the pencil by collecting and working the wood and graphite himself then, sure, he didn’t exploit anyone… as soon as he went into business employing others to manufacture those pencils he started to. The moment he concentrated the means of pencil production in his own hands he started to exploit both his raw suppliers — that graphite miner’s health woes are the fruit of Jimmy’s demand — and his employees. In the end it was the people actually turning the raw materials into pencils that made the value; the invention added nothing until someone’s labour was exploited.

[WendyTheWillow]

Jimmy didn't do any of those things. The claim was that Jimmy can't produce value, but he did.

And even so, the work the people making the pencils for Jimmy would not exist without Jimmy. Jimmy, in yet another way, provides value. Jimmy figured out to put the wood with the graphite, not them. Who actually does it is irrelevant; or are you suggesting that if Jimmy kept his operation entirely mechanical, that'd be better?

[mfru]

> the work the people making the pencils for Jimmy would not exist without Jimmy

Apart from this example being overly reductive and not rooted in reality, the hypothetical Jimmy would eventually be replaced by someone else who would invent this pencil.

There is no truth that needs a single person to be uncovered. There are infinitely many people able to invent the pencil given enough tries and time. This also makes the argument of original thought not being original.

We are made and influenced by our surroundings and thus the ideas we form must necessarily be a product of those surroundings.

So, even if Jimmy had the idea to "invent" the pencil, he will not be the first one who did. He might be the first one with enough capital to execute (as in buy machines and factories, hire workers and exploit them for their labor and scale the business to planet-scale) and this is where it gets ugly.

[WendyTheWillow]

> the hypothetical Jimmy would eventually be replaced by someone else who would invent this pencil.

As I've seen it historically, here's the crux of your argument. "If not for this employer, some other person would have done what they did, so it's not even really their value."

The problem becomes the devaluation effect this has on ideation, which misaligns incentives away from innovation and progress. Since when do we presume someone would have done something, discounting the person who actually does? This wouldn't apply to the laborer who constructed the pencil, I observe. "Well, anyone could have constructed this pencil, so why value the production?" Nobody makes that argument.

Additionally, this devalues the organizational contribution of coordination between the lumberjack and the miner. Jimmy coordinates their raw materials into an environment where they can be combined in the first place. Even if he doesn't invent the pencil, he still creates value by building the environment for the job to exist. Absent someone in Jimmy's role, none of the pencil-construction jobs would exist.

[lwhi]

You don't need to resort to extremely basic non-real world examples to show how capitalism works out when we live in a world full of capitalism.

Just because something seems like it _should_ be possible, doesn't mean that other worse consequences won't manifest.

[WendyTheWillow]

This is an exceptionally real example. People invent things all the time and build companies around their ideas.

It's not "should", it's "is". This is happening, all over the place, right now.

[lwhi]

I'm afraid I fundamentally disagree with your rose tinted view of capitalism.

[WendyTheWillow]

You disagree with reality then, because what I'm writing is descriptive and not subject to opinion.

[benwad]

It's true that Jimmy created value, but so did the people who chopped the trees and mined the graphite (or however you get graphite). But it's unlikely that Jimmy got the wood from the person who chopped the tree - they got it from someone who paid the lumberjack a wage and took the created value for themselves. If Jimmy starts employing people to make these pencils, he is now taking the value of their labour for himself, purely because he had the money to buy these raw materials in the first place.

That's ignoring the environmental impact of getting these raw materials. Value creation doesn't happen in a vacuum, and most people involved in the creation of that value don't get a share in the profits from creating said value.

[bitcharmer]

> That didn't require exploiting the lumberjack or the miner. Jimmy did not steal value from either. He created value by inventing a new way for their raw materials to be useful to other people. Jimmy didn't need to "stand atop" anyone to do this.

This is absolutely not where most of billionaires' wealth comes from. You are being naive if you think this is how they make money.