>> “Whenever you apply elbow grease to nature, so to speak, you speculate it will have been better than nit doing anything. You delusion that labor necessarily leads to valuable goods is false.” <<
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How many times have you dug a hole or trench of random size in a random location on speculation that it would be of value to an unknown buyer?
Your example lacks relevence to the real world. (no analogy exists)
“Your example lacks relevance”
Ugh. It’s called reductio ad absurdum. You said “labor always produces value,” which is false. I proved it with an abnormal example. But it so happens to be not mine and an example with a famous pedigree. Keynes was reputed to have said stimulus spending would be worthwhile even if we paid men to dig up holes and fill them in. Or was it dig ditches? No matter.
Now, you may say no one is so foolish as to think doing so would produce value. But all sorts of tangible produce is valueless, as you must know. Like I said, you can redefine labor as fruitful labor, but that’s just as unrealistic as my example of fruitless laborious.