Human Iterations

(Nutty LTV Partisans & All You Can Eat Buffets)

Consider: I spend a bunch of labor making a giant batch of lemonade. I slap a tap on it and offer to charge people by the hour (or by session) to have at it freely, maybe changing my price weekly. I'm renting the motherfucker.

Yes, it will eventually expire -- but so will a house.

Agorists and most market anarchists who support the freedom to usury ground their notions of property rights in labor-mixing. In other words, an additional value in the structural arrangement of a material -- which is inherently something that can entropy. Simple occupancy uses up a house. Even viewing (shining light on) a painting significantly degrades it over time (this is a major concern of museums). And then there are issues of risk, responsibility and variable use.

But there is no logical reason whatsoever to consider the immediate market value of a good bought in full to represent the full labor cost of that good. Prices change over time. If I expect a good to increase in value over time or simply bring in more than it might from an immediate purchase on the part of someone who only needs it for a relatively short period (even if that single sale is paid in installments), why shouldn't I be able to sell it off incrementally?

Those who insist that the laborers who built a house should only be allowed to be remunerated for their labor at whatever price they can make selling the whole of it at once are depriving those workers of the full product of their labor.