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The economic notion of "value" is weighted by wealth. Feeding a poor starving kid has no "value" -- because the kid has no money to pay you with. Merging up all

The economic notion of "value" is weighted by wealth. Feeding a poor starving kid has no "value" -- because the kid has no money to pay you with. Merging up all the banks to win bailouts has extraordinary "value," because it helps people with lots of money obtain even more money. Associating the wealth-weighted "value" that economies optimize with the non-wealth-weighted concept of value that we all treasure is the largest PR coup of the last few centuries. Markets and economies do a lot of good for the world, but whoo boy is there a big difference between what they pretend to optimize and what they actually optimize.

vorpalhex 5y ago
There's a reason we don't practice pure capitalism. The starving kid can't pay you but the Fed absolutely will, and the cost of food is amazingly low current inflation meat prices aside. You can make grandiose statements about value but at some point you need to offer a concrete example. What is currently not valued that should be?
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Labor. Having capital is overvalued, doing work is undervalued. Doing shit work is especially undervalued. Systematically and intentionally. Take note that I am using the colloquial definition of value, here -- not the economic definition. Equating the two is not innocent, it is equivalent to the assumption "capitalism is good," which rather ends the conversation. The failure of American capitalism to live up to even the weakest of its promises -- "a rising tide floats all boats" -- for 80% of Americans over the last 40 years is nothing if it is not grandiose. Still, the "grandiose statements" of mine were meant to exercise the limits of the weight function. The actual realization of this prioritization is a million and one instances of "I thought markets are supposed to improve and optimize over the long term, why did this thing get worse?" Followed by "Did it get worse? Think about it again from the perspective of a market that values rich peoples' investment accounts over anything you care about, and ask yourself if made things worse for them or if it is functioning exactly as intended." Spoiler alert: it's functioning exactly as intended.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    You realize the middle class is shrinking because they are becoming the upper class right? Meanwhile the average household size has dropped (Grandma and Grandpa now have their own digs), ownership of luxuries has exploded and even car ownership is way up. What, precisely and concretely, is getting worse?

vorpalhex 5y ago

There's a reason we don't practice pure capitalism. The starving kid can't pay you but the Fed absolutely will, and the cost of food is amazingly low current inflation meat prices aside. You can make grandiose statements about value but at some point you need to offer a concrete example. What is currently not valued that should be?

jjoonathan 5y ago
Labor. Having capital is overvalued, doing work is undervalued. Doing shit work is especially undervalued. Systematically and intentionally. Take note that I am using the colloquial definition of value, here -- not the economic definition. Equating the two is not innocent, it is equivalent to the assumption "capitalism is good," which rather ends the conversation. The failure of American capitalism to live up to even the weakest of its promises -- "a rising tide floats all boats" -- for 80% of Americans over the last 40 years is nothing if it is not grandiose. Still, the "grandiose statements" of mine were meant to exercise the limits of the weight function. The actual realization of this prioritization is a million and one instances of "I thought markets are supposed to improve and optimize over the long term, why did this thing get worse?" Followed by "Did it get worse? Think about it again from the perspective of a market that values rich peoples' investment accounts over anything you care about, and ask yourself if made things worse for them or if it is functioning exactly as intended." Spoiler alert: it's functioning exactly as intended.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  You realize the middle class is shrinking because they are becoming the upper class right? Meanwhile the average household size has dropped (Grandma and Grandpa now have their own digs), ownership of luxuries has exploded and even car ownership is way up. What, precisely and concretely, is getting worse?