is that Smith lived before the impact of technology made it possible for economists to see what really constitutes value and profits and the justification for rent in an advanced industrial society.
Today new values are created by superseding old values, and “equal quantities of labor” have nothing to do with the case. The Austrian economists saw this abstractly before Americans proved it out in practice. Anyway, what is the “quantity” of labor that goes into the hundred thousandth car off an assembly line? Is the fact that production can be pushed with constantly accelerating profits to that notch due primarily to “labor,” or to the quality of the dies, or to the ingenuity of the production line planners, or to the willingness of investors to pay for high-grade automation equipment? There is no objective way of measuring just who put what percentage of “value” into an automobile that comes off a long line of production after many months of planning and many months of stimulating the market to the point where it really hungers for the latest thing in car design. As for profits in mass production, they represent savings on cost at volume operation far past a “break-even point,” and they are distinctly not something “added into price.” As for modern rents, they are not onerous, for the demand for labor exceeds the demand for land. Ask any farmer who has acres to spare for the Soil Bank.
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