5 ms·

99% of people who invoke the labour theory of value misunderstand it. Welcome to the 99%.

UK-Al05 6y ago
Oh I understand it(well sort of because even Communists can't agree), I've read all theory about Labour theory of value. Marx never defined the terms about value rigorously, so it can be whatever people want it to be. I know all about socially necessary value, etc and all hacks people have applied to it over the years. There are tons of interpretations about it. It still has zero predictive ability in the real world. Subjective preferences explains where profit comes from with much greater predictive ability. And models real world phenomenon we see.
tossmeout 6y ago
Comments like this are useless, bc you're declaring someone is wrong without any explanation of (a) why they're wrong, and (b) what's actually correct. The result is that I have no reason to believe you, or to even understand your point. Because you've essentially made no point.
dang 6y ago
Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. If you know more than others, the best way to respond is to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, that's fine, but in that case please don't post. Letting the internet be wrong about everything is the primary survival skill we all have to work on anyhow. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- postingpals 6y ago
  Sorry, as you know it's a contentious issue and we get tired of repeating the same information. Then again, I'm sure you get tired of repeating yourself too.
  - slumpt_ 6y ago
    Sometimes snarky dismissals are appropriate. Trying to hold everything to some academic standard of discourse is implausible when we have deliberate bad actors pushing disingenuous arguments that - by this standard - must be repetitively exhaustively deconstructed time and time again. Expecting that is how you convince a large subset of folks to never bother with said deconstruction, and ultimately let bad ideas roam free and otherwise get adopted by impressionable / gullible minds. Snark is there to suggest the reader go do their own research.
    - dang 6y ago
      Actually snark works quite a bit better in academic discourse, where the communities are smaller and more cohesive. It doesn't work well in large, open internet forums like this one, where it basically just triggers an avalanche of tedious and ever-worse behavior. I'm not making a moral point—rather an empirical one about this particular type of internet environment. Here's a related explanation from a few weeks ago if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130956 In a context like this, snark doesn't encourage people to "go do their own research" or save "impressionable / gullibile minds", nor is that really what people care about. (If it were, they'd expend energy doing those things in a way that might actually work.) Rather, its function is to vent one's own frustrations by translating them into concentrated language. The effect this has on community is to pollute it with fumes. This is destructive of the ecosystem, unless one is happy with a single species, the snark, consuming all the others. Therefore we all need to find better ways of self-regulating and containing our frustrations. Then we can address other people in a way that has a chance of connecting with them.
      - slumpt_ 6y ago
        It is unfortunate flagging censors the posts. Was interested to get more context in the thread and instead it’s hidden entirely. Regarding the rest, I’m happy to simply disagree with you having observed this in practice in other communities. It’s not black and white.

Oh I understand it(well sort of because even Communists can't agree), I've read all theory about Labour theory of value. Marx never defined the terms about value rigorously, so it can be whatever people want it to be. I know all about socially necessary value, etc and all hacks people have applied to it over the years. There are tons of interpretations about it. It still has zero predictive ability in the real world. Subjective preferences explains where profit comes from with much greater predictive ability. And models real world phenomenon we see.

tossmeout 6y ago

Comments like this are useless, bc you're declaring someone is wrong without any explanation of (a) why they're wrong, and (b) what's actually correct. The result is that I have no reason to believe you, or to even understand your point. Because you've essentially made no point.

dang 6y ago

Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. If you know more than others, the best way to respond is to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, that's fine, but in that case please don't post. Letting the internet be wrong about everything is the primary survival skill we all have to work on anyhow. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
postingpals 6y ago
Sorry, as you know it's a contentious issue and we get tired of repeating the same information. Then again, I'm sure you get tired of repeating yourself too.
- slumpt_ 6y ago
  Sometimes snarky dismissals are appropriate. Trying to hold everything to some academic standard of discourse is implausible when we have deliberate bad actors pushing disingenuous arguments that - by this standard - must be repetitively exhaustively deconstructed time and time again. Expecting that is how you convince a large subset of folks to never bother with said deconstruction, and ultimately let bad ideas roam free and otherwise get adopted by impressionable / gullible minds. Snark is there to suggest the reader go do their own research.
  - dang 6y ago
    Actually snark works quite a bit better in academic discourse, where the communities are smaller and more cohesive. It doesn't work well in large, open internet forums like this one, where it basically just triggers an avalanche of tedious and ever-worse behavior. I'm not making a moral point—rather an empirical one about this particular type of internet environment. Here's a related explanation from a few weeks ago if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130956 In a context like this, snark doesn't encourage people to "go do their own research" or save "impressionable / gullibile minds", nor is that really what people care about. (If it were, they'd expend energy doing those things in a way that might actually work.) Rather, its function is to vent one's own frustrations by translating them into concentrated language. The effect this has on community is to pollute it with fumes. This is destructive of the ecosystem, unless one is happy with a single species, the snark, consuming all the others. Therefore we all need to find better ways of self-regulating and containing our frustrations. Then we can address other people in a way that has a chance of connecting with them.
    - slumpt_ 6y ago
      It is unfortunate flagging censors the posts. Was interested to get more context in the thread and instead it’s hidden entirely. Regarding the rest, I’m happy to simply disagree with you having observed this in practice in other communities. It’s not black and white.