Immaterial labor myths obscure the physical goods underpinning billionaire wealth

Evidence

Additionally, the rise of immaterial labor, the belief that value, today, comes primarily from knowledge, from images, from social relations—beliefs that lead to the mistaken view that the economic valuations of corporations like Tesla, Amazon, and Facebook emerge from the “genius” of their founding individuals—has obscured how the manufacturing and sale of consumer goods still underpins the wealth of today’s bourgeoisie. The legacies of industries such as mining and transportation literally provide the capital today’s “entrepreneurs” used to start their careers as “creative” capitalists, and few of these businesses can be said to focus on ideas and images rather than the selling or movement of physical consumer goods and raw materials. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 372

Categorization

• XREF: Critical for the labor theory of value angle: the commodity is still physical goods, not ideas—surplus realized from manufacturing and shipping.