The Lord made the brine. I made the line. The line is the lithium carbonate conversion reactor at the processing facility I own outside Beatty, Nevada. Selma is a hand on the line. She has worked the reactor for 41 months. She stands at the vessel 8 hours a day, adding sulfuric acid to a concentrate hauled up from a pit whose country I do not have to learn. The tote arrives in my yard sealed. The seal is the only foreign geography I am required to know. The lithium carbonate that leaves the line, packed in 1-tonne super-sacks, becomes the cathode powder that becomes the cell that becomes the battery in the device you are holding. The respirator cartridges are rated for one shift. The Division’s threshold for issuance is met. The threshold is the threshold. The cartridge she purchases herself is not on the ledger.
The 41 months have produced 7,800 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate. At the spot price of the month she started, those tonnes are worth $89,700,000. She has spent $1,148 of her own money on cartridges. 0.00128% of $89,700,000. The respirator I refuse to issue is the margin. The margin is less than the catering at the shareholders’ meeting. The catering is itemized. The cartridge is not.
Paz, in the Fox News opinion page, announced that Bolivia’s Central Bank reserves had moved from $51 1,000,010 months ago to close to $1.2 billion now, and he called the arrangement “capitalism for everyone.” I read the column with interest. Paz is selling the concentrate. I am buying the concentrate. The concentrate is the courtesy between his country and my yard. Selma is downstream of the concentrate. The hand at the pit is upstream of the concentrate. Paz is upstream of the pit. I am downstream of the reactor. You are downstream of me. The chain runs in one direction. The wage runs in the other.
Here’s where it turns. Read the next sentence twice. The wage is $19.40 an hour. That is what the labor market clears at. The labor market clears at what I am willing to issue. What I am willing to issue is the wage. The cartridge is not the wage. The cartridge is overhead. The 41 months are not the wage. The 41 months are time served. The hands are not the wage. The hands are the line. The Administrator’s threshold is not the wage. The threshold is the threshold. “He has a paycheck. He has a threshold. He has what I am willing to issue. These are not the same thing as clean air. Clean air was never in the line item. The line item was the line.”
Lift your eyes off the one body for a moment. A threshold met. An issuance not made. A cartridge self-purchased at $14 a shift. Now multiply that figure across 11 years of operation, across every shift of every hand, across the precise distance between what the law requires and what I am willing to provide. That distance is always $14. It has always been $14. The labor market clears at what I am willing to issue. The worth of the thing she protects is what the spot market says it is. These are the same sentence, and I have taught this arithmetic for 30 years. The young men I trained at Warden sit in the personnel offices of every supplier in this chain. One of them sits in the personnel office of the labor broker who supplies my Nevada line. He prices the respirator the way I taught him — not as protection, but as a cost basis. I say that with a teacher’s pride. There is no single author of this arrangement. There is no single plant to raid. There is no single invoice to dispute. There is only the margin. The arithmetic is older than the concession, older than the spot price, older than the regulatory threshold.
One of those graduates sits in the personnel office of the copper supplier whose freight train crosses from the port of Arica and pulls into my Globe, Arizona siding every Wednesday. Same arithmetic, different suit. There is a woman at the rod mill I own downstream of that siding — Esperanza, a hand on the sulfuric-acid pickle line for 9 years. The acid mist comes off the bath at 140°F. She wears cotton gloves I supply from a wholesale house in Phoenix at $0.87 a pair. Nitrile costs $2.14. The cotton fails on the second acid dip of every shift. The acid reaches the skin. The skin cracks. The cracks are hers. The savings are mine. The eyewash station at her station was tagged out of service in the second quarter of 2024. Same owner, same supply chain, different metal, identical column.
“I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers, those who swear falsely, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, and do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty. — Malachi 3:5
The Scripture condemns fraud. My deductions are disclosed. My rates are agreed. The threshold is met. The issuance was made. The worker deserves his wages, and the wage is what I am willing to issue. The believer has read the verse, absorbed it into his theology, and moved on, untroubled. The Lord has been consulted. The Lord concurred. The bezzle — Galbraith’s interval between the commission of a fraud and its discovery, the magic window when the perpetrator is richer by the sum taken and the victim does not yet feel poorer — has collapsed to nothing. The fraud was committed in the first quarter. The battery was purchased in the third. The body was depreciated in the fourth. The accounting never caught up because the accounting never looked. The body was never on the ledger.
The tote arrives sealed next Wednesday. The Administrator’s threshold is met. The margin is less than the catering. The Lord’s patience is finite — I haven’t checked the maturity date. The margin is mine.
Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University’s College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks: Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization, Social Obligations for Profit Maximization, and Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation.