Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Value from Culture-Nature

The labor theory of value, shared by both Locke and Marx (though not the originators of the idea), claimed that "nature" is value-less until manipulated by human labor. Labor creates value. Locke (Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. V): "Whatsoever... he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that it his own [the labor of his body], and thereby makes it his property." This passage from Locke, of course, is the keystone of the liberal tradition of private property... "it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men." This is also the point on which Locke and Marx part company (though Marx additionally seems to have ascribed a peculiar kind of value to nature absent human labor - this is a matter of dispute). Often neglected, but of crucial importance is Locke's "proviso" that property may be created and become one's own, "at least where there is enough, and as good left over in common for others."

Given this little context, what do we make of this?
"I remember what a man in the business told me back then," Zhang Yin said. "He said, 'Waste paper is like a forest. Paper recycles itself, generation after generation.'"

Zhang took that memory all the way to the bank. As a result of her entrepreneurship, she is now richer than virtually any other woman anywhere in the world, including Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, and the chief executive of eBay, Meg Whitman. Her personal wealth is estimated at $1.5 billion or more.

Her companies take heaps of waste paper from the United States and Europe, ship it to China and recycle it into corrugated cardboard, which is then used for boxes that are packed with toys, electronics and furniture that are stamped "Made in China" and then often shipped right back across the ocean to Western consumers.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im not getting the property/recycling connection but there is an illusion that this is an endless cycle machine.In fact ,this enterprise takes enourmous amounts of energy and in fact forest resources are being exploited at ever increasing rates. Promoted as a "renewable resource", we justify destroying habitat for wasteful use.

MT said...

What aspect of recycling American paper into Chinese cardboard consumes lumber or otherwise deforests? I'm sure there's hidden environmental costs and this lunch isn't so free as sometimes advertised, but the idea that it increases deforestation, if that's your point, is hard to believe. Are you blaming Chinese recycling for the damming of the Yangtze? I think the point is that packaging increases energy consumption even when its from recycled material, and so less packaging is better.

MT said...

But to helmut's point: Chinese profiteering is based on the dam, not the locke. Never heard of the ports of Long Beach or Oakland? They don't need the Panama Canal.

helmut said...

No big theory here. I was thinking vaguely mostly in terms of a few things: 1) creating value out of waste (to the point that you become one of the richest people in the world); and 2) that somewhere here there might be something interesting to say about the Lockean proviso (in both the sense of heavy wasters saying "look, enough and as good..." and the sense of creating physical "property" out of someone else's, which is very rare today, I think).

Deforestation didn't have anything to do with this, MT.

Yes to both of you - recycling does require large amounts of energy. There's also the shipping, the processing, etc. Doing that in China especially, I'm sure, is hardly a green process. But that wasn't what I was suggesting here - more an open question....

MT said...

Sorry helmut: troutsky's "forest resources" was what triggered my comment, with which I meant to be personally challenging troutsky to elaborate or clarify his point, meanwhile offering my hunch of what he would have said if he actually cared at all about my eyebrow wrinkles.

MT said...

Your post was not a total failure of communication BTW, helmut: Contra troutsky, I caught your drift. Just didn't have anything smartalecky to say on point.