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Understanding the struggle between "Capital" and "Labor"

  1. Historically, most of the Stock Shares in large "public" companies and corporations are owned by (a) the wealthy people who invested the "capital" that was used to start the company and (b) other wealthy people who have purchased the stock from the original investors. Those owner-investors as a group are commonly called "Capitalists". The actions and programs of Capitalists are most often called "Capitalism".
  2. In accounting terms, "capital" is the "money" that the original investors put into the company.
  3. Over time, "capital" has come to generally mean all the physical, non-human assets, that are used in the company to produce products or services. All tools and materials used in production are thus called "capital".
  4. "Public" companies are called "public" because the common public can buy shares in the company. "Public" does not mean the common people own most of the shares in the company.
  5. Lots of Stock Shares are owned by common non-wealthy people through their shares in large pension plans, but we hazard the guess that the total of those shares are insignificant when compared to those owned by capitalists.
  6. Common non-wealthy people, as a group are often referred to as "Labor"
  7. Most popular economic theories contend that all wealth is generated jointly (but not equally) by Labor and Capital as implicitly defined above.
  8. In most published theories and in most common thinking, the most fundamental concept is seen to be a struggle between "Capital" and "Labor", with each trying to wangle and wrangle the biggest slice of the American economic pie.
  9. Labor is often seen to be part of the common masses of (a) social order or (b) the common people. They are thus often called "Socialists" or "Communists". As a group, their actions and programs are most often called "Socialism" or "Communism".
  10. Early humans had no tools. Therefor labor was, by default, the most important part of all production and we can safely assume Labor received all the fruits of that labor.
  11. When tools were invented, it became difficult to determine what share of the production could be attributed to the tools and what share could be attributed to the labor. If one man, using a plow, seeds and water created a field of turnips -- it was impossible to say how much of the value of the turnips was generated by the man, the plow, the seeds or the water.
  12. Things became much more complicated when people began owning land. How much of the value of a field of turnips should be attributed to the land? This severely impacted the struggle between Labor and Capital.
  13. In all of the above -- Capital is by definition everything other than human labor -- probably because all of those things can be purchased and sold.
  14. Modern machinery and power sources developed over the last 100 years have obviously reduced the importance of human labor to production. A single machine can do the physical work of thousands of humans. That fact is rapidly removing whatever fragmentary balance previously existed between Capital and Labor.
  15. If we do not restore that balance, we are in for a continuing class struggle between Capital and Labor.
  16. It is worth noting that nobody -- not Labor nor Capital are benefiting fully from the enormous potential of the inventions of the last 100 years.
  17. If we eliminate the struggle -- we can all be much better of than we are now. We probably can eliminate poverty and common ignorance.
  18. And then what? if everyone has every physical thing they want, will there still be wars?

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