First off, I appreciate the honest debate, lacking distortions of my arguments and addressing them in full. This shows that you have the courtesy to fully read and understand what it is you're replying to. I thought you were going to go down another route before, but you're proving to be a pretty chill logical adversary, deserving of a well thought out and written response.
That's quite possible to answer, and I most certainly will. However, I'm going to point out a couple things before and after.
By using the logical tactic that I have been using in regards to labor, with innovation, you seem to be suggesting an equivalence between innovation and labor. This seems to be a shift from your previous stance which was to suggest that innovation takes precedence over labor to one in which they are equivalent. They are not. Even if this is not your intention, the argument still falls short of validity due to the fact that labor and innovation are not equivalent, which I will show in the following argument including one example of wealth creation in the absence of innovation.
Each innovation occurs once, while each and every act of wealth creation requires repetitive and ongoing labor. For example, there have been many innovations in the field of agriculture. Each of these innovations only occurred once, since they were no longer innovative when replicated. However, as a courtesy, I will explicate your argument more charitably, as it is clear that you intended that the original innovation is still taking part in the ongoing creation of wealth. Such as in the case of say, automated farming equipment. At best, I would only be able to concede (as long as I'm being honest) that innovation has augmented labor, but labor will continue to take place in creation of all wealth in the field of agriculture. In this example, labor is also still required to design, build, assemble, sell and maintain said equipment.
New wealth is not created in the absence of labor but by definition, innovation occurred only once, and simply changed the way labor was conducted. After that, it is no longer innovative, until a new innovation occurs but in the mean time, labor goes on creating wealth every single time the crops are cultivated and the machinery is in use. I have never denied the importance of innovation, but I see innovation as an augmentation of labor, either to increase its efficacy or decrease its cost and resource requirement.
^^So that's my answer^^ But there's more to point out. This subject is more important than it seems at first glance. After all, labor creates all wealth, and we can agree at least that wealth is extremely important to society.
There is a huge overlap between innovation and labor. Some of the hardest working people out there, are innovators. Some of the hardest, most intensive, and important work is research and innovation. In most cases, with very few exceptions, it is done specifically to augment some type of labor and it definitely requires much labor in and of itself. In short, innovation is a form of labor. Now this isn't one of those "in essence we agree, but semantics" arguments. I think we genuinely disagree, in essence. This is because I think you're actually suggesting that laborers require some innovator to think up ideas for them since you have suggested that labor is but a resource, just like any other resource. You have made it pretty clear in fact that you see innovation as the primary creator of wealth, but as has been demonstrated, innovation does not occur every time wealth is created, as labor does.
Also, those who innovate in a given field usually have a great deal of experience in the labor of the field in which they are innovating. In other words, farmers and agricultural experts are the ones designing and inventing (innovating) the equipment that will augment the way they create wealth.
