THE ROCK BOTTOM BASICS
1) The natural state of human existence is abject poverty. That’s the starting point–naked, hungry, and homeless.
2) Any effort towards survival is the most basic form of wealth creation.
3) LABOR is a key element in creating any wealth. Even cupping your hands together to draw water from a stream is labor. That water is a rudimentary form of wealth trickling down your throat.
4) PROPERTY is required to create wealth. In order to drink that water you must hold rights over that water, at that moment. Your labor turned a previously unclaimed natural resource into your property. And that raised your standard of living… from dehydrating to death, to being quenched.
Universal Economic Law: You cannot survive without labor and property!
How a Caveman Capitalist Creates Wealth
1)- A stick is a natural resource.
2)- A caveman picks up an unclaimed stick, and it becomes his property.
3)- He uses his time and energy (labor) to sharpen the stick. It becomes more valuable than the stick in its original form (the product of his labor).
4)- And when he impales a rabbit, he has used his wealth (the sharpened stick) plus his labor (the thrust) to produce more wealth (a dead rabbit to eat).
5)- The caveman accumulates more rabbits than he can eat (capital).
—– Q1: Is the caveman a bad man for accumulating more rabbits than he could eat?
6)- So he trades five rabbits for a bow and arrow (the product of someone else’s labor).
7)- Now he can rapidly accumulate even more rabbits (capital).
8)- He trades more rabbits for more bows and arrows. He distributes these bows and arrows to other cavemen under the condition that they give him 1 out of every 3 rabbits they hunt (employment). The entire village is now flush with rabbits.
—– Q2: Should the hunters have been allowed to seize his means of production (the bow and arrow) in order to keep all of the rabbits they hunted?
9)- Rabbit jerky becomes the medium of exchange (money). This means the mushroom gatherer doesn’t have to worry about not having enough protein, and neither does the forager or the fire tender. They can now specialize in what they are good at, and trade their labor for rabbit jerky (which can buy other products and services). The entire village becomes flush with warmth, mushrooms, berries, and greens.
10- The Caveman Capitalist trades rabbit jerky for materials to build a hut. He trades jerky to workmen to build the hut. He trades jerky for someone to cook for him, and to guard his hut. And all the pretty cavewomen want to get their hands on his jerky.
—– Q3: Should the builders have been able to keep the hut they built for the Caveman Capitalist, even though they agreed to take rabbits in exchange for their labor?
11)- Now that survival is guaranteed, people can focus on comfort and quality of life. Everyone can afford a hut, someone starts producing medicine, another invents beds, and someone else the wheel. And why forage when you can plant the seed right in your backyard? Now, most village children live past infancy. (The overall standard of living of the village has increased.)
12)- People have so much extra free time without having to constantly fight for survival, some weirdo figures out rabbits will actually keep breeding inside a cage, so you really don’t have to hunt.
13)- Uh oh! How is the Caveman Capitalist going to create wealth now that his industry (hunting rabbits) has been upset? He starts picking the cutest wolves and breeding them (innovation). Turns out, everyone loves the freakish results! And they are actually pretty useful too.
14)- And so on and so forth, until the people with the highest standard of living in human history complain about capitalism on their iPhones.
—–Q4: Should the village be able to use their strength in numbers to take all the Caveman Capitalist’s jerky, even without providing him any value in return?
—–Q5: Is rabbit jerky the root of all evil?
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
If you answered “Yes” to any of the five questions … you’re a Socialist. Congrats! You’re village is assured to live in abject poverty, and you will probably starve to death.
SOURCE: THE DAILY BELL
(Millenial/): Kill and eat rabbits!??!!?? You’re sick; we’re all vegans. Couldn’t you have used a tofu as an example instead of a rabbit?
Besides, your model of ‘society’ doesn’t work; there are no safe spaces to protect us from the evil rabbit-killers, and that guy with the hut should have made one big enough for the whole village. (/Millenial)
I don’t think that choice of the rabbit metaphor was entirely accidental.
Haha.
Fiat/usury/monopolies fuck it all up. Plus the commons are not private property. Once they are, you be a slave.
Stucky, off topic but please do some reading about Alzheimer’s and magnesium. One good source of info is The Magnesium Miracle by Dr. Carolyn Dean (check your local library). You can read it in a day or two but you should read other sources as well. —–an old friend
Anon- That is, among other reasons, why I soak in epsom salt( magnesium sulphate) and essential oil baths regularly.
That’s pretty much how it works. Certainly a better explanation than the ones dreamed up by Marx and Keynes.
Stucky- There is always some group of assholes who want to take something away from productive people. Call it whatever you like, it is part of the programming here in this plane of mental turpitude.
Boomers stealing from their children and grandchildren, for example.
Cavil if you like RatDawg, this is beyond the talent of a mere philodox.
Jesus, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
I rest my case Phil…….
Pot, meet kettle.
Enjoyed the article. I initially thought your wrote it but then saw at the end it was from the “Daily Bell.”
Plus too, a rabbit/vegetable diet could easily lead to the rabbit starvation (a metabolic difficulty brought about by lack of dietary fat), so a sage cave-guy might oughta trade some of his rabbits for poultry/milk/butter/eggs/avocados/olives and or beef meat. With that all he’ll lack is a governmental organization (like the FDA) to hound him about a made-up problem with “high cholesterol”, so they can get him on statin drugs and ruin his life.