Trying Again To Explain Certain Real-World Basics

In the Marxist approach to industry and commerce, the value of any commodity is determined by the labor that went into producing it. This view actually is true to a great extent, _provided_ that (1) the value of the item is sentimental, bound up with feelings for the _person_ who worked on it, or else (2) the point of creating the item was to give the worker hands-on experience. In most _other_ cases, however, the value of the product consists in the benefit or satisfaction received by the person who _purchases_ it, or the person to whom it is given. I could work for ten hours to make a kettle of stew; but if my stew has five brimming cups of salt poured into it, all of my labor won't change the fact that the stew is too salty for anyone to like eating it. Anyone tasting one mouthful of my labor-valued product will quickly gain a new appreciation for defining value by benefit received. One consequence of accepting the Marxist definition of value is that the _consumers_ of any commodity are denied _their_ say in matters of what is to be produced for consumption. A small-business entrepreneur, by the very nature of things, has to pay attention to what people want; and in a free-enterprise economy, he or she has the independence to make _decisions_ for production based on information about the market. But in a government-controlled economy, manufacturers are shielded from all accountability to the consuming public, which lets them get away with turning out junk. And where tight corporate monopolies exist, they become effectively THE SAME THING as a state-controlled Marxist economy, due to enjoying the same immunity from having to answer to the public. When Barack Obama spoke his malarkey about "You didn't build that," his excuse-makers insisted that he had "only" meant that every business is "a team effort.' But this _wasn't_ all that Obama had meant. His aim was, and is, precisely to belittle the role of entrepreneurs -- the persons who PLAN AND ORGANIZE a business in order to act on their own judgment of what consumers will want to buy. Obama wants to _eliminate_ these leaders from the equation, so there won't BE any leaders of industry except big-government collectivists like himself. So I pray now for America to be saved from suicidal stupidity....