Kevin Raybauld asks (in the comments below):
I guess I am just not sure why information qualifies as a different category. Like I said, to me, it seems to fit the category of a natural resource, at least in behavior. How is information different than say, steel? In the 19th century, one could have argued that control and manipulation of steel was just as important to economic success as information is today.
Kevin, steel is information – the information on how to make steel, plus the natural resources (iron ore, coal) plus the labor needed. It’s all one unified process, distinguished only by the way we try and analyze it (candle flame: chemical process or physics problem?).
I argued below that Marx screwed up because he divided everything into two categories: labor and capital (land and frozen labor). I’ll argue there is a third category, information, and that the history of modernity is in part the trumph of the information-wranglers (think clerks, bankers, engineers and scientists) over the landowners and the laborers.
Of course the wranglers are themselves laborers…so the analysis gets kinda complex.
But to quote Dante (the clerk, not the poet) “I’m not even suppsed to be here today…”
Back to looking for projects…
Date: 07/25/2002 00:00:00 AM
Information may be a sort of capital, but it differs in that it cannot be used up (although it can be destroyed, or corrupted to uselessness by mixing in a little misinformation). In telling you what I know, your information increases, but mine does not diminish. In fact, teaching and writing tend to improve the teacher’s or author’s knowledge as well, although this is hardly enough payoff to compensate for the work involved.So information-based wealth should multiply faster than is possible with material goods.[A.L.: I deleted your multiples, plus your polite apology…in fact I think wealth has increased substantially faster as we moved to an information-based economy…great point]
Date: 07/24/2002 00:00:00 AM
Excellent, boy! The Riddle of Steel! You know what it is, don’t you?It’s dangerous to base political discussions on fiction, but Heinlein in Starship Troopers makes this same point during a course in “History and Moral Philosophy” during the long process of Johnny Rico’s maturation. He tears apart Marx’s labor theory of value, pointing out that labor by itself is worthless, or even harmful, and only when combined with knowledge and skill is it valuable.Which is one reason among many why people who like the movie can’t figure out the book, and why those who like the book despise the movie. Too much thinking going on in the novel.
Date: 07/24/2002 00:00:00 AM
Okay, I better see what you are driving at, but I would still argue that information is capital. I think that anything that can be worked upon is capital, and anyone that works on capital not of their own accumulating is a laborer.I am not really a Marxist – honest 🙂