Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10 lbs of yarn. Two and a half days’ labour has been embodied in it, of which two days were contained in the cotton and in the substance of the spindle worn away, and half a day was absorbed during the process of spinning. This two and a half days’ labour is also represented by a piece of gold the value of fifteen shillings. Hence, fifteen shillings is an adequate price for the 10 lbs of yarn, or the price of one pound is eighteenpence.
Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the product is exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced. the value so advanced has not expanded, no surplus value has been created, and consequently money has not been converted into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings and fifteen shilling were spent in the open market upon the constituent elements of the product, or, what ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the spindle worn away, and three shillings for the labor power. The swollen value of the yarn is of now avail, for it is merely the sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle, and the labour power: out of such a simple addition of existing values, no surplus value can possibly arise.
- Karl Marx Capital Volume 1 Part 3 Chapter 7
Dear Readers, in the last article, the Rugged Polity, we looked how a Polity is able to endure hardship in a much more robust and stabile way than a Metropolis is able to. The TL/DR version is that a Polity is much like my old tractor - if it doesn’t key start, I can short out the starter, I can roll it down a hill before slamming into gear to mechanically start it, or tow start it with my wife driving a car towing it.
In short - it has a durability to it, both within the Polity itself, and with its neighbors who it has built a favorable relationship with over the years.
But, that is the matured, developed Polity. How is one supposed to act as a laborer, tradesman, or business owner within the developing Polity?
How does one approach hiring on neighbors?
Buying food your neighbors they put their sweat and labors into, especially if they’re legitimately making a go at making it their major source of income?
How does one value the good that are made in the Polity?
To start with, one needs to be realistic about all business enterprises within one’s Polity before they even begin. How rural are you? How many people are within the distance that you’re able to sell or service? Are you able to offer/sell the goods online?
I will also always, always, advocate that you primarily focus upon goods that are sold and serviced within the community or a mix of within/outside of the community if your skillset allows. Sales outside of the community only, or working on a computer to do location independent jobs, do not in themselves build up a community.
Thus if you work a location independent job, the primary part of your life - literally the thing that you spend most of your waking hours as a man, and most of your interactions with other human beings doing exchanges of money, communication, morals, ideas, etc - is with people outside of the community.
So, assuming now that you start a business that the community can support in part or in whole, how does it value you and your wares? How do you value others?
I’ve noticed this to be somewhat tricky. Most people are used to Walmart and Mexican prices for goods and services, respectively. Meaning Chinese and illegal slave labor. Or legal labor at low price points from the illegals. They have a mentality that people should not be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and raise a family. Rather, their price points reflect this, even if they don’t think about it consciously.
Of course, this changes once they are the ones needing to be hired, or set prices for goods. It becomes harder, because often people are sloppy thinkers. They’re worse accountants. They create a buffer for their good/services from their “main work,” often actually working for free or at a loss locally. They may sell things at a loss, rather than at their true value, and thus undercut the whole market, because they simply don’t care, want an excuse to get out of the house from a nagging wife, or any other number of reasons.
This is compounded in most Rural locations in the services and cheap goods, because people hire “handymen” to do poor work, or do it themselves. Such workers regularly do shoddy work, that costs twice as much to fix, but sets a price point in people’s head on what labor should cost
There is also a natural, and good, in group tendency to charge those within the Polity less, or do favors for friends that may do you a favor in return down the line later.
The result is that as a worker or producer you usually find yourself working for cheaper than one ought in the Polity, while you shift the Overton Window for clients.
As a purchaser, you often spend more money hiring within the Polity than without.
If one is dedicated to purchasing items or labor within the Polity, you by definition only have limited options. There is not any “shopping around.” In addition, one must take into account that they likely have (if they’re Catholic) more children - thus they have a higher cost of living which will necessarily drive up their costs more. Not everything can be done simply by working more, especially when having larger families means it’s harder to work more!
As such, think of it more like a tariff, place around the Polity at times. There’s not really a tariff, but there is those extra costs there that will come into play, and aren’t going away any time soon.
As such - it’s ironic…
Often, doing business you’re able to command higher amounts for your goods and services outside of the Polity.
Meanwhile, if you’re purchasing goods and services from those within the Polity, you’re paying more than if you had shopped around outside of the Polity for the cheapest option.
Therefore, the two people are both meeting in the middle, both making a sacrifice of what they could earn or could be paying, because they both believe in making the Polity work. Not making such sacrifices means that there is no business done between individuals within the Polity, that there never comes to be a common understanding of value seeking vs rent seeking vs immoral profit seeking, building community together through exchange of goods and skills; each having something of equal value needed and exchanged.
And, in doing so, we learn the burdens of the other and carry them.
That is, after all, what economic exchange does - find the needs of the others, their burdens, and relieve them.
So, come dear Reader…
Find your brethren, your Polity, and be brave enough to take a prudent leap of Faith. That one might trust in God, and the Polity, to sustain your life economically as you build it up spiritually and culturally.
Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment? Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is to day, and to morrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith? Be not solicitous therefore, saying: What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.
Be not therefore solicitous for to morrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
- The Gospel According to Matthew 6:25-34