First off, my impressions of Elon Gold, standup comedian, and his standup concert film Chosen and Taken.

To begin with, a caveat : I am only halfway through said concert, and so for all I know, in the second half of the hour-long show he starts to suck so badly that it will wipe out my appreciation for not just him but several random members of the audience just for being there.

But so far, I am quite impressed. The start of the show was not that great, and there were times when I started contemplating hitting the reject button and stopping video and taking it off my Netflix list.

But then he kind of clicked into gear and started doing his well-honed, well-delivered jokes, and showing off his rather impressive vocal and impersonation skills, and I warmed up to him.

Now his jokes are largely ethnic. For some people, that instantly makes him racist and awful and Hitler-like. But nothing he says or does is meant maliciously, he just points out things about various demographics in an entirely accepting and loving way.

One joke I liked : He was talking about the difference between Israelis and Jews, and he said “Every Israeli is drafted into military service. Jews feel a draft and complain to the service. ”

See? To me, that is just too damned clever and funny to be offensive. He is dealing in stereotypes, obviously, but stereotypes are not wrong in and of themselves. In fact, the right kind of stereotypes, the ones based on observation of commonalities as apposed to assigning negative traits, can benefit a population greatly by giving it a sense of commonality and community that it never had before.

And it is the good kind of stereotypes that he’s dealing with. Italians being very direct, big black women being no-shit-taking forces of nature, Latinos loving the Fast and the Furious movies… nobody can really get offended by these things without looking ridiculous.

My theory is that at one point, Elon was a very intelligent kid who made these observations about various groups, no malice intended at all, and was told that that is the sort of thing you just don’t talk about, ever.

And of course, that is the best/worst thing to say to a budding comedian because that just makes our minds laser focus on the thing we are not supposed to talk about. Instead of making it forbidden, they made it interesting, and now we can’t stop thinking about the forbidden subjects.

Also, when you make something forbidden, you create tension around the subject, and that tension is precisely what is going to fuel the comedy in the future. A lot of comedy, and especially satire, is about relief of suppressed tension, which is why that, for now, sex is still the funniest thing around because we’re so repressed about it.

Anyhow, I am really appreciating this Elon Gold dude and find his approach to ethnic stereotypes quite funny and refreshing. I look forward to the other half of the show.

Moving into philosophy, I have been pondering the labour theory of value versus the capital theory of value today, and I thought I would share said thoughts with you.

Briefly, the labour theory of value says that you earn rewards in a just society via labour. The example I like from my high school economics class is the idea that if you and a friend were walking through the woods and found an apple tree, and you both picked an apple, you would object if your friend then took your apple.

Why? There are plenty more apples. You have only been in contact with that apple for moments. Your friend has as much need of that apple as you do. So why do you object?

Because by picking it, you made it your apple. You invested labour in it, and now it’s yours.

This is the most psychologically simple and understandable form of value. You do, you get. It is the reason the idea that hard work gets you ahead is so prevalent despite the mountains of evidence that this is simply not true.

We really want it to be true. It appeals to our deep communalist instincts. You contribute more to the collective, you get more from the collective. It makes basic sense.

Less sensible is the capital theory of value. There, instead of picking the apple, you bought the tree, and thus took a financial risk in advance of expected apple selling profits.

This makes a sort of sense to people. You put your money on the line and created a business, and you deserve to profit from that. You even invested labour in an indirect way by doing all the step necessary to secure ownership of the tree. So far, everything makes sense to people.

But if, for the rest of your life, you just sit back and collect fat apple profits while your apple pickers live in tin shacks, the power of labour over capital in the human mind starts to kick in.

Why should you get all the money from the apple tree (and this phrase perfectly encapsulates what I am talking about) when you don’t do any of the real work.

This, I feel, is the psychological basis for the tension between labour and capital. We understand the concept of rewarding risk, but only up to a point. Then the whole thing breaks down. You mean the small amount of money you risked gets you the apple profits for LIFE?

That just doesn’t work, on a deep psychological level.

And yet, I see capital’s point. They hire people to do jobs. It’s a fair exchange of money for labour. There is no logical reason for someone you hired to do something to expect anything more than their wages.

The reason isn’t logical, no. It’s psychological. The labour theory of value is embedded deep in our social instincts and thus will always have a lot more power than the capital kind, no matter how much modern society relies on people being willing to take financial risk in order to create the businesses that we all depend on for damned near everything.

Corporations make this even more complicated because, especially after they have been around for a while, you can’t point to a person who took the risk. It’s all this faceless, nebulous entity that, to the ground level worker, seems like it is entirely parasitic and exists only to suck away most of the value they create.

And past the point of return of investment, that argument gets harder and harder to dispute.

That is why I am for employee-owned businesses, and why I think every union’s long term goal should be to buy the company. Then labour and capital are one, and the problem is solved.

Of course, some people don’t want to be in charge of their own destinies. They just want to complain.

I don’t care for that kind of person.

See you all tomorrow, folks!