THE VALUE IS ALL IN ORGANIZING, NOT IN LABORING —“This is profound. How about

THE VALUE IS ALL IN ORGANIZING, NOT IN LABORING

—“This is profound. How about expanding it and making it into its own post? Who organizes violence? Who organizes reproduction? Etc.”—Ben Smith

THE ECONOMICS OF TIME

our only existential commodity is time. It is very scarce. when we divide labor we produce multiples of returns on time that are not achievable by any other means. In this sense we are not wealthier than cave men, we have simply made all things cheaper.

When we come together in groups we have the choice of flight, cooperation, or conflict. If we cooperate that means at the very least we do not prey upon each other. At best it means that we engage in a division of labor. But most importantly, we reduce opportunity costs – the time necessary to find an opportunity.

So while our second commons is cooperation, (property), our first commons is opportunities. When we cooperate we do not allow one another to seize opportunities. Instead, we only allow one another to homestead opportunities. This is why competition succeeds: we compete for opportunities created by proximity and property. And we empirically test our hypotheses by our success or failure in seizing those opportunities via the market.

Now, we hold this set of opportunities (territory) by defending them from others. We defend them from others who would take them without homesteading. We defend them from others who would reallocate that property and those opportunities.

The military ‘owns’ the territory. All of it. Everyone else is merely a customer. That’s simply an operational fact.

So the military organizes the territory. Within it, the government organizes the commons. Within the commons the capitalists organized production; the bourgeoise organize production distribution and trade. Within the commons the people organize families. And Labor (important distinction) organizes physical things as needed by transforming them from one state to the next. So nearly all work is using incentives to organize people, while labor organizes that which is not human.

Now we come together into markets (cities) where opportunity costs are low, but territorial costs are high, and commons are cheap. Others distribute to suburbia and rural areas where opportunity costs are higher, territorial costs are lower, and commons are terribly expensive.

Some countries intelligently solve this problem (french concentration in cities, and protectionism in the rural areas; or german mandatory family sized apartments in cities) or really poorly (british homes are tiny, dark, expensive, hovels by comparison), new york is moving the way of tokyo, and much of asia is returning to pre-civilized eras where one rents a cubicle for sleeping and lives outside of that area the rest of the day.

The costs of commons differ by density. If we were to vote on commons then votes should consist of the inverse of population density, since the cost of commons in rural areas is absurd, and this is what accounts for the differences in urban and rural behavior: accurate perception of differences in costs of commons.

Landlordism (manorialism) has proven an exceptional method for allocating territory to those who are most productive with it, and pushing out those who are unproductive. In America we already have Georgist taxation on land. It hasn’t changed anything. Property rents vary by location but mostly by the built capital upon that location. So it doesn’t make any difference. The russians tried the opposite and it led to shitty life everywhere.

If you said that the resources are a commons, then yes, that makes sense. If you said that taxes on rental properties are not empirically matched to total service costs I would say that was easy to test and it’s unlikely to be true.

So unless you can make a fairly strong portfolio case then it’s hard to argue.

Landlords organize density the way investors organize industry, the way entrepreneurs organize talents, the way managers organize labor.

All the value is in organizing people. The labor isn’t worth shit.