Community-created Values

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 10, 7 October 1936, Page 16

Community-created Values

Sir, —It is “Dominic” who is “hazy” about community-created values. It is not a fact that all labour, mental and manual, everything for sale, has com-munity-ereated value. Obviously, the maker of a pair of boots, for instance, is the creator of the value of those boots, for he is the creator of the boots. If I buy the boots, the price I pay for them measures the value of the boots to me, but does not create the value of the boots. In buying the boots I get a clear title from the maker of the boots. But what landowner can show a clear title to the lapd from the Maker of both the land arid him?

So much for labour, mental and manual, employed in production. As for labour, mental and manual, employed in rendering services other than the service of production, the labour clearly belongs to the worker who renders the services; and if I pay him for his services, the pay I give him simply measures the value of the services to me; it does not render the service and therefore does not create the value of the service.

Under just conditions, competition will justly measure the value, both of.services and goods, to the community; but to secure just conditions the first essential is that all shall have equal rights of access to the land which the Creator provided for all, not for the few. To secure that wiuality of access, the communitycreated value of the land must be taken for community purposes.—l am, etc., B.S. Wellington, October 7. [This correspondence is closed.]