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No, I'm sorry, the "rate of exploitation" is purely a Marxian economic concept, and it is a simple ratio: that of the total amount of surplus-value to the total
by owenversteeg 5y ago
No, I'm sorry, the "rate of exploitation" is purely a Marxian economic concept, and it is a simple ratio: that of the total amount of surplus-value to the total amount of wages paid. The article we are discussing here clearly refers to the Marxian concept and not anything else. You are conflating so many different things (gross profit margin, net profit margin, rate of return on capital, rate of exploitation) that I do not even know where to start. I would recommend a primer on economics.
- sudosysgen 5y agoDo you suggest another way of quantifying exploitation? How do you judge who is more or less exploited? It stands to reason that if you're getting paid less but your employer is making a lot of money, you're more exploited than otherwise. There is no good way of approximating the rate of exploitation of Google. All we know is that it is lower or close to the gross profit margin unless cost of raw resources are significant. We also know that the rate of exploitation is necessary higher than the rate of return on capital for capital heavy industries, which was the case of the mills in 19th century England. So despite low quality data on the rate of exploitation we know that it's higher than for Google. Also net income is closely related to the rate of exploitation. I'm not confusing them, they're just the closest proxy. If you take the "non-labour costs" as themselves a sum of indirect labour costs and ultimately rents, you will understand why.