| | Adam,
Thank you for this question:
Could you please explain why you now seem to agree with Andy's exclusion of human and intellectual capital from the scope of the concept of wealth?
And thank you for the word "seem."
I do not agree at all with the exclusion of human and intellectual inputs from the concept of wealth. I have a bit of difficulty with a concept of any of the three areas under discussion, human (as in human resource), intellectual and material goods being stand-alone capital or stand-alone wealth. I see all wealth, as you properly identified, as the sum of the means for the pursuit of man's values. The key word here in this context is "sum."
Some types of wealth have a more physical manifestation, others have a more intellectual, and others a more human. But all, from what I can ascertain, involve each other to some extent.
One of my areas of interest, as you probably have noticed in other threads, is intellectual property law. I can think of no greater example of a company that understands the different types of wealth and has exploited all of them than Sony Corporation. It produces the hardware for entertainment (TV's, Videos, DVD's, even computers), it produces the content (movies, music, etc.) and it nurtures its people through the philosophy laid down by the founder Akio Morita. Early in its history, he appointed Norio Ohga as vice president. Mr. Ohga's interest was not in industry. He was an orchestra conductor. He ended up being chairman of Sony and was one of the guiding policy makers.
Sony's wealth covers all of the goods it produces, all of the intellectual (artistic) content that use the physical supports it produces and all of the people who work in that firm and produce both the goods and the content.
To be more concrete, a recording company does not sell just music. It physically sells pieces of plastic - that is what goes into the basic accounting (mechanicals it is called). However, it is the music that gives those little pieces of plastic a high price tag when they actually cost pennies to produce. So then "rights" get factored into the accounting. Those rights refer to the intellectual (artistic) content.
Even stating that a recording company sells music or sells pieces of plastic is misleading. It sells both.
Which is the greater wealth - the stores of plastic (and the equipment to produce them), or the recorded music and the artists who give the plastic such value, or the workers who produce and distribute the plastic?
They are all needed for Sony's wealth.
I am dealing basically with an entertainment company, but the same principle applies to farming, mining and heavy industry.
I suspect that Andy also includes all this (human and intellectual) in his concept of wealth also, and he is merely making a differentiation between the kinds of wealth based on an oversimplified definition.
The danger with this type of rhetoric, as you noted, is in being interpreted as excluding the other inputs (human and intellectual).
I "seemed" to have agreed with him (you caught me in midstream) because I was trying to get him to settle down a bit and concentrate on the issue, starting with the basic "let's define our terms." As I noted in an earlier post on this thread, Andy has a habit of not paying attention and taking off explaining everything to everybody based faulty observation. He is intelligent, however, and if he will slow down, I feel his contributions will be of solid value to the discussions on Solo (so many which I selfishly enjoy). Since he is very prolific in his posts (like yours truly), it is hard to catch his attention on a basic premise. Once he takes off, the discussions I have seen seem to veer all over the place later on tangents.
So, OK, there was a bit of wooing going on. That's what you observed. But that's all it was.
I was trying to center the discussion (which interests me) without acrimony based on Andy's nature. I probably could discuss these things elsewhere and with other people, but here is where it was happening and Andy was dominating the discussion through sheer volume.
Michael
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