You're only basing the bottles value in a monetary sense. What are you finding difficult to understand about that? The guy could do anything for that bottle of water. So it has value.
Not in the marketplace, it doesn't. Supply and demand is based on
money, B0ycey. This is capitalism we're talking about, remember? It's all about the money. Even when they tell you it isn't about the money, it's about the money. If nobody is willing or able to exchange money for that bottle of water,
then it has no exchange-value. And exchange-value is the only kind of value which matters under capitalism.
@mikema63, I'd like to think rancid would give the bottle away for nothing. So don't take this seriously. We are just trying to establish whether the US has the means to create wealth.
And my point is that the US may have the means to create wealth, but during a capitalist crisis of over-production those means would lie idle and untapped. What do you think the difference was between the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression of the Thirties? Did America's factories suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke in 1929? Did America's workers suddenly turn into lazy bums overnight for no apparent reason? What do you think happened in 1929?
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Marx (Groucho)