Phat writes:
I think that ringo is claiming that labor was initially required to give everyone enough value to make a trade or a purchase. In a depression, a guy might be willing to dig a ditch for $5.00 because he needs value in his pocket for food, etc.
For sure, I think that labor increasing value is one of the easiest or most-popular ways.
But even "initially" might be wrong.
Maybe in a depression a guy just gave another guy $5.00 because he was feeling charitable. No ditch needed to be dug.
Maybe the very first trade was a charitable one.
Maybe the very first value increase was when an ape-man saw a natural cave... but then another ape-man saw the same cave.
And a third saw the same cave as well.
The first was willing to walk over to it.
The second was willing to fight for it.
The third was willing to kill for it.
Nothing happened though... and the third ape-man got the cave.
The value of the cave just increased from "walking to it" up to "killing for it" with no labor happening.
My point is yes, you can think of all sorts of scenarios where value falls back on labor.
But, you can also think of all sorts of scenarios where value does not fall back on labor.
Or, at least, I'm pretty sure I can. I'm not really very economically-inclined. I find a lot of it too abstract for me. So I could easily be making some mistakes and not understanding the concepts well enough.