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miltonlosttoday at 2:52 PM2 repliesview on HN

No, they provide capital. It's the workers who provide value to the company.


Replies

missedthecuetoday at 3:21 PM

It's hard to explain why entrepreneurs want capital so much if it provides zero value. They're all stupid and doing something they ought not to?

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achenettoday at 3:36 PM

arguably, capital is also value.

If you have a machine that makes widgets, which requires people to operate, the machine (capital) without anyone operating it (labor) is worthless, but if you have people (labor) without any machine (capital), you won't have any widgets.

I feel like this is one of those situations where "the whole is larger than the sum of the parts" - combining the power of capital and labor, you get much more value than just capital or just labor.

Of course, this does NOT imply that "I provided the capital, it couldn't have happened without me, ergo I deserve all the rewards" is true, even if, if we look at the history and current state of the world, generally speaking it is more advantageous to provide capital than it is to provide labor.