| There's a lot that's correct about what you wrote, but a lot that isn't. The fundamental dichotomy is: Property is by nature excludable, Energy by nature must be applied to something (usually either Property or the Commons) to do any work. Markets run on excludability. If you can't fence something off and appropriate it as your own, you can't trade it, because someone else can just take it from you. Here's a theorem: the more excludable something is, the more accurately markets value it. This is why Commons Goods and Public Goods are dramatically undervalued in a market system: they're non-excludable. Anyone can breathe the air or attend public schools, but someone has to keep the air clean and provide public schools. Beyond this, I recommend reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty, as well as Das Kapital by Karl Marx. But what it comes to is that in the great struggle between Capital and Labor, or Property and Energy, capital is by nature very excludable, while Labor (lacking organization into a guild or union) is not very excludable (workers cannot stop the capitalist from working for himself, even if only temporarily). Capital will thus be valued more on free markets than Labor, in general. This actually maps exactly onto left-right politics, outside the United States. In most of the world, the Right represents Property/Capital and the Left represents Labor/Energy, and socioeconomic politics consists of trying to form a workable arrangement between the two. |
Excellent point. What I wonder is how excludable Capital truly is, though. Is it inherently excludable? Gold is, and electronic money effective is, but land isn't, and social connections definitely aren't.
This actually maps exactly onto left-right politics, outside the United States. In most of the world, the Right represents Property/Capital and the Left represents Labor/Energy, and socioeconomic politics consists of trying to form a workable arrangement between the two.
Great observation. In the U.S., we effectively have two political parties that represent Property. One is just more of a dick about it, and more willing to use cultural wedge issues to move useful idiots against their own interests, but they're both pretty rotten. I think, for what it's worth, that their uselessness is by design; an ineffectual government enables these parties' rich owners to get away with murder.