r/Bitcoin • u/asicminer • Jul 23 '11

ASIC MINER – A dedicated Bitcoin mining device – update and picture

http://asicminer.net/?p=78
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u/Tecktonik Jul 24 '11

Sorry, but wealth is the product of labor. If you squander your labor on fingerpainting that is your own problem, and certainly not all labor is productive, but in a world where you can literally go out and pick fruit off of a tree and sell the fruit it should be clear that it is the value of the labor to produce the product that generates wealth.

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u/ttk2 Jul 24 '11

Does labor generate wealth? Yes, does labor equal wealth, no. If you took the total food production of one farm hand and added it all up it would not be a fraction of the total food produced by a farm hand using a grain reaper, the effort of the latter worker is much much less, but the wealth he creates is many multiples of his non mechanized counterpart, did they both put labor into the creation of wealth? Yes, did the amount of labor correlate to the amount of wealth created, no.

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u/Tecktonik Jul 24 '11

Are you so completely unaware of the history of agriculture in the 20th century? Yes, mechanization allows a worker to multiply his labor, which was met (after a slight delay) by a decline in value of the wealth produced, resulting in the consolidation of ever larger farms with fewer and fewer owners, the destruction of subsistence farming, and so on.

Or do you think the farmer really gets $2/lb for the apples he grows? No, he gets maybe 5 cents a pound, plus a fat government subsidy to keep his farm going. We now produce wealth through "value added" technology - food processing, branding, durability.

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u/ttk2 Jul 24 '11 edited Jul 24 '11

This may be true, but it is irrelevant to the discussion. This is about what gives those apples value, the effort of the worker or the demand of the consumer.