5 ms·

Even the fruit analogy is laughably wrong. If I have a basket of oranges and you have a string of sausages, and we swap some of each, there are no more sausages

by simonh 6y ago

Even the fruit analogy is laughably wrong. If I have a basket of oranges and you have a string of sausages, and we swap some of each, there are no more sausages or oranges but the diet and nutrition of both of us has significantly improved. That's why merchants create value, buying from people with a surplus and selling to people with a need. You can kind of understand why medieval nobles didn't understand this, but in this day and age it's not exactly rocket science. He gives his socialist credentials away later with the art example, only a worker making something can possibly add any value. It's the classic theory that managers and investors are all parasites and only workers create value. Again, value can absolutely be created by identifying an imbalance in supply (labour) and demand (products and services) and then working out how to resolve it. Somebody has to do it. I'm not saying Bezos' sums are credible or accurate or even mean anything, but this critique is crazily off base.

albatruss 6y ago
I don't know if the author is a socialist but Marx himself would certainly agree with your first paragraph. In his own words: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch05.htm#1a https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch05.htm...
- simonh 6y ago
  I’m not sure how you can think that if you read Marx. He’s explicit that merchants are parasitic because he makes an artificial distinction between use value and exchange value. From your link: “ If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if non-equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus-value. Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.” He makes the distinction so that he can special privilege the value of labour as productive “use value”, but the value of all goods derive from their use. The job of a merchant is to buy something from someone who has no or little use for it, and sell it to someone who has greater use for it. In the same text he claims that no value can be created by converting a currency note into change, but this is trivially not true. With coins I can buy things from people who can’t change a note. I can also buy things from a vending machine that won’t accept notes. In some circumstances coins are more useful, in others notes are. That’s why people expend time and effort to go to banks to exchange one for the other. Marx cannot accept any of this though, because if he does his entire economic analysis of capitalism comes crashing down. For Marx distribution of goods creates no value. Seriously, read the text. He had no answer to the question why anyone would ever pay to transport a product from a factory to a purchaser. No value can possible be created by doing this. Really.
  - albatruss 6y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you or defending Marx, only pointing out a common misconception. Marx's project is frequently misunderstood. > but the value of all goods derive from their use That's the definition of value economists adopt today following the marginal revolution, just as artificial as Marx's definition of value, which he qualifies as use-value or exchange-value. Marginalism is a great descriptive explanation for situations like the diamond-water paradox, but it is not really relevant to Marx's prescriptive project, as it concerns only what Marx calls use-value, and Marx's project very much relies on exploring this distinction he identifies between use-value and exchange-value. Whether that exploration is correct or important is another question, but I hate seeing this confusion of definitions and goals crop up all the time. Marx doesn't hold all these obviously stupid straw men views people ascribe to him regarding (use-)value, rather he thinks that the way we conceive of value should be rethought.
    - simonh 6y ago
      It’s a shame the ways he rethought value were so toxic. Defining everything that isn’t primary production as parasitic really isn’t a healthy way to look at an economy.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
> Again, value can absolutely be created by identifying an imbalance in supply (labour) and demand (products and services) and then working out how to resolve it. Somebody has to do it. 1) it's an axiom that "Somebody has to do it". You can't demonstrate that this is anything other than a feature of the political/power structure within the society where this putative imbalance happens. You can't demonstrate that the imbalance is inevitable, nor that it requires action by a 3rd party to resolve, only that these things happen a lot in our current society. 2) You make the remarkably naive assumption that the receiver of said orange and sausage have somehow freely computed the value of the exchange to them, compared it with the cost they incur to the merchant, and found the result to create value for them. In the real world, they may not have sufficient information to even begin this computation. They may not be in a position to do the computation at all.

by simonh 6y ago

albatruss 6y ago

I don't know if the author is a socialist but Marx himself would certainly agree with your first paragraph. In his own words: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch05.htm#1a https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch05.htm...

simonh 6y ago
I’m not sure how you can think that if you read Marx. He’s explicit that merchants are parasitic because he makes an artificial distinction between use value and exchange value. From your link: “ If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if non-equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus-value. Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.” He makes the distinction so that he can special privilege the value of labour as productive “use value”, but the value of all goods derive from their use. The job of a merchant is to buy something from someone who has no or little use for it, and sell it to someone who has greater use for it. In the same text he claims that no value can be created by converting a currency note into change, but this is trivially not true. With coins I can buy things from people who can’t change a note. I can also buy things from a vending machine that won’t accept notes. In some circumstances coins are more useful, in others notes are. That’s why people expend time and effort to go to banks to exchange one for the other. Marx cannot accept any of this though, because if he does his entire economic analysis of capitalism comes crashing down. For Marx distribution of goods creates no value. Seriously, read the text. He had no answer to the question why anyone would ever pay to transport a product from a factory to a purchaser. No value can possible be created by doing this. Really.
- albatruss 6y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you or defending Marx, only pointing out a common misconception. Marx's project is frequently misunderstood. > but the value of all goods derive from their use That's the definition of value economists adopt today following the marginal revolution, just as artificial as Marx's definition of value, which he qualifies as use-value or exchange-value. Marginalism is a great descriptive explanation for situations like the diamond-water paradox, but it is not really relevant to Marx's prescriptive project, as it concerns only what Marx calls use-value, and Marx's project very much relies on exploring this distinction he identifies between use-value and exchange-value. Whether that exploration is correct or important is another question, but I hate seeing this confusion of definitions and goals crop up all the time. Marx doesn't hold all these obviously stupid straw men views people ascribe to him regarding (use-)value, rather he thinks that the way we conceive of value should be rethought.
  - simonh 6y ago
    It’s a shame the ways he rethought value were so toxic. Defining everything that isn’t primary production as parasitic really isn’t a healthy way to look at an economy.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

> Again, value can absolutely be created by identifying an imbalance in supply (labour) and demand (products and services) and then working out how to resolve it. Somebody has to do it. 1) it's an axiom that "Somebody has to do it". You can't demonstrate that this is anything other than a feature of the political/power structure within the society where this putative imbalance happens. You can't demonstrate that the imbalance is inevitable, nor that it requires action by a 3rd party to resolve, only that these things happen a lot in our current society. 2) You make the remarkably naive assumption that the receiver of said orange and sausage have somehow freely computed the value of the exchange to them, compared it with the cost they incur to the merchant, and found the result to create value for them. In the real world, they may not have sufficient information to even begin this computation. They may not be in a position to do the computation at all.