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> There is no objective cost to things What? How do you produce things? Do you will them into existence? That's great for you, most everyone else uses resource

> There is no objective cost to things What? How do you produce things? Do you will them into existence? That's great for you, most everyone else uses resources and labor to produce things. These represent objective costs. > If the person is tired today and wont work unless you pay him a thousand dollars, then it costs a thousand dollars today. Or you don't hire them today. > How do you avoid this in your system? A labor market. > Do you enslave people and force them to work? Soviet did that, you weren't allowed to not work, you had to work, nobody was free. ...calm down.

jiofj 3y ago
>These represent objective costs. That's the point, they don't. Nothing has an objective cost. What's the objective cost of one hour of work painting a house? Of one kilogram of rice?
- orthecreedence 3y ago
  > What's the objective cost of one hour of work painting a house? You answered your own question. It cost one hour of house-painting labor. You have an action and a measurable duration. It doesn't get much more objective. How much you or someone values that labor is subjective, but the labor itself objectively happened.
  - mercenario 3y ago
    How do you compare the value of these things with other things? In capitalism that is the role of price system. How 1 hour of house painting compares to 1 hour of dog walking, with 1 hour of a neurosurgeon, 1 hour of dish washing, of 1 hour of playing football, etc?
  - jiofj 3y ago
    This could be the case before the invention of currency.
    - deciplex 3y ago
      What about the invention of currency negates it?
  - goatlover 3y ago
    And if I want you to paint my house, what does it cost me? The objective cost doesn't matter, what matters is what others are willing to exchange for it. I could spend ten hours of back-breaking effort digging a ditch, but if nobody wants a ditch, then it has no value. And if it's just for me, that's not economic activity. Economics involves exchanging goods and services.
    - orthecreedence 3y ago
      > The objective cost doesn't matter How could anybody run a business if they don't know what it costs to make something? How is stating something so incredibly obvious and simple so difficult for you to understand? Bank: What's your business plan? Loan applicant: I don't need one! Costs are subjective lol!!1
      - goatlover 3y ago
        So explain what it costs a business to make something in non-monetary terms. Will the bank be loaning them painting hours?
        orthecreedence 3y ago
        > So explain what it costs a business to make something in non-monetary terms. I've just spent like 20 comments doing so. Short version: labor and resources. > Will the bank be loaning them painting hours? Tangential to my point, but I'm happy to go into details on how this might work. Effectively various forms of labor would have a known cost (set by labor markets) and various resources would have a known cost (beyond the labor to extract them) derived from some social price-setting process (we can just call it "democracy" for now). So if you make widgets, you'd have to demonstrate to the bank that you can do so with X resources (at R cost) using A labor at L price, and together the total cost being N (remember, we can add R + L because they both have a price value either set by labor markets or by democratic pricing, ie a common unit) and you'd have to demonstrate there is a social need for your widgets at R + L cost. If you can do so, when another company orders 100 of your widgets, they take on the disaggregate cost of your widgets (100 * (R + L)) and that cost is removed from your company's costs. So although the costs are reducible to a single "price" (an at-cost price) which can be used for effectively limiting a company's upper ceiling on costs, the actual disaggregate costs are the ones that are tracked and passed through the economy until purchase by a consumer, who is able to inspect and act on the disaggregate cost (but pays the aggregate price as a single number). Yes, I know what you're thinking, shortages, clearing prices, etc etc. Short rebuttal: the consumer might not pay the actual at-cost price based on a set of automated incentives the company follows to limit shortages or clear inventory. So back to your question, the bank might loan them a total aggregate amount that they can spend to acquire at-cost items from the economy to transform them into widgets, at-cost. Happy to expand...and forgive me if I've been short, but the number of people engaging who are automatically assuming I want slavery or don't know how markets or prices work is making it difficult to separate good faith from bad.
Jensson 3y ago
> A labor market. That is capitalism though and has the same problems as capitalism. For example, the doctors guild could say that surgery costs a million dollars. That makes all the doctors rich, so all doctors agree to not perform surgeries for less than a million dollar. Does that mean that surgeries objectively costs a million dollars? The way we solve that issue today is by regulating unions so they don't get that level of power. But what that regulation looks like isn't objective in any way, and it will shape the prices you will see, so labour prices are subjective.
- orthecreedence 3y ago
  Labor markets are not capitalism. A commodity production system using prices for exchange with productive instruments under private ownership is capitalism. If we define capitalism to mean "anything that supports my argument" then yeah, of course you're right. > For example, the doctors guild could say that surgery costs a million dollars. And they would have exactly zero customers and go bankrupt, because another competing doctors guild would do the surgery because they value saving lives over driving luxury cars. Labor market. > Does that mean that surgeries objectively costs a million dollars? If you paid it, then it objectively cost that much when you paid it, no? > But what that regulation looks like isn't objective in any way, and it will shape the prices you will see, so labour prices are subjective. Yeah, labor prices are subjective. Observed labor, performed at a specific price, performed over a specific time, is objective. How much labor and what amount of resources and what processes took place to transform those resources for any given product is very much objective. These values might change over time as some labor becomes more costly or resources become more scarce than others, but that doesn't change that there is an objective measurement to what it cost to make some thing. Not some thing that might exist in a day or a week, but some thing that already exists. You can thump your subjectivity bible all you want, but you're wrong.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > because another competing doctors guild Why would there be another competing doctors guild? Worker organizations become monopolistic just like any other unless you regulate that. edit: > How much labor Labor isn't fungible, you can't replace a doctor with an average person. No two human do exactly the same labor, labor is therefore impossible to quantify unless you simplify it, and how we decide to simplify that is also subjective. Naïve socialists tend to say that all work hours are equal, which obviously isn't true and wont work at all. So then we have to decide whose labour is worth what, and we are back at the unequal society we have today where some persons labour is decided to be worth billions and others barely anything, unless you come up with some new different way to value labour.

jiofj 3y ago

>These represent objective costs. That's the point, they don't. Nothing has an objective cost. What's the objective cost of one hour of work painting a house? Of one kilogram of rice?

orthecreedence 3y ago
> What's the objective cost of one hour of work painting a house? You answered your own question. It cost one hour of house-painting labor. You have an action and a measurable duration. It doesn't get much more objective. How much you or someone values that labor is subjective, but the labor itself objectively happened.
- mercenario 3y ago
  How do you compare the value of these things with other things? In capitalism that is the role of price system. How 1 hour of house painting compares to 1 hour of dog walking, with 1 hour of a neurosurgeon, 1 hour of dish washing, of 1 hour of playing football, etc?
- jiofj 3y ago
  This could be the case before the invention of currency.
  - deciplex 3y ago
    What about the invention of currency negates it?
- goatlover 3y ago
  And if I want you to paint my house, what does it cost me? The objective cost doesn't matter, what matters is what others are willing to exchange for it. I could spend ten hours of back-breaking effort digging a ditch, but if nobody wants a ditch, then it has no value. And if it's just for me, that's not economic activity. Economics involves exchanging goods and services.
  - orthecreedence 3y ago
    > The objective cost doesn't matter How could anybody run a business if they don't know what it costs to make something? How is stating something so incredibly obvious and simple so difficult for you to understand? Bank: What's your business plan? Loan applicant: I don't need one! Costs are subjective lol!!1
    - goatlover 3y ago
      So explain what it costs a business to make something in non-monetary terms. Will the bank be loaning them painting hours?
      - orthecreedence 3y ago
        > So explain what it costs a business to make something in non-monetary terms. I've just spent like 20 comments doing so. Short version: labor and resources. > Will the bank be loaning them painting hours? Tangential to my point, but I'm happy to go into details on how this might work. Effectively various forms of labor would have a known cost (set by labor markets) and various resources would have a known cost (beyond the labor to extract them) derived from some social price-setting process (we can just call it "democracy" for now). So if you make widgets, you'd have to demonstrate to the bank that you can do so with X resources (at R cost) using A labor at L price, and together the total cost being N (remember, we can add R + L because they both have a price value either set by labor markets or by democratic pricing, ie a common unit) and you'd have to demonstrate there is a social need for your widgets at R + L cost. If you can do so, when another company orders 100 of your widgets, they take on the disaggregate cost of your widgets (100 * (R + L)) and that cost is removed from your company's costs. So although the costs are reducible to a single "price" (an at-cost price) which can be used for effectively limiting a company's upper ceiling on costs, the actual disaggregate costs are the ones that are tracked and passed through the economy until purchase by a consumer, who is able to inspect and act on the disaggregate cost (but pays the aggregate price as a single number). Yes, I know what you're thinking, shortages, clearing prices, etc etc. Short rebuttal: the consumer might not pay the actual at-cost price based on a set of automated incentives the company follows to limit shortages or clear inventory. So back to your question, the bank might loan them a total aggregate amount that they can spend to acquire at-cost items from the economy to transform them into widgets, at-cost. Happy to expand...and forgive me if I've been short, but the number of people engaging who are automatically assuming I want slavery or don't know how markets or prices work is making it difficult to separate good faith from bad.

Jensson 3y ago

> A labor market. That is capitalism though and has the same problems as capitalism. For example, the doctors guild could say that surgery costs a million dollars. That makes all the doctors rich, so all doctors agree to not perform surgeries for less than a million dollar. Does that mean that surgeries objectively costs a million dollars? The way we solve that issue today is by regulating unions so they don't get that level of power. But what that regulation looks like isn't objective in any way, and it will shape the prices you will see, so labour prices are subjective.

orthecreedence 3y ago
Labor markets are not capitalism. A commodity production system using prices for exchange with productive instruments under private ownership is capitalism. If we define capitalism to mean "anything that supports my argument" then yeah, of course you're right. > For example, the doctors guild could say that surgery costs a million dollars. And they would have exactly zero customers and go bankrupt, because another competing doctors guild would do the surgery because they value saving lives over driving luxury cars. Labor market. > Does that mean that surgeries objectively costs a million dollars? If you paid it, then it objectively cost that much when you paid it, no? > But what that regulation looks like isn't objective in any way, and it will shape the prices you will see, so labour prices are subjective. Yeah, labor prices are subjective. Observed labor, performed at a specific price, performed over a specific time, is objective. How much labor and what amount of resources and what processes took place to transform those resources for any given product is very much objective. These values might change over time as some labor becomes more costly or resources become more scarce than others, but that doesn't change that there is an objective measurement to what it cost to make some thing. Not some thing that might exist in a day or a week, but some thing that already exists. You can thump your subjectivity bible all you want, but you're wrong.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > because another competing doctors guild Why would there be another competing doctors guild? Worker organizations become monopolistic just like any other unless you regulate that. edit: > How much labor Labor isn't fungible, you can't replace a doctor with an average person. No two human do exactly the same labor, labor is therefore impossible to quantify unless you simplify it, and how we decide to simplify that is also subjective. Naïve socialists tend to say that all work hours are equal, which obviously isn't true and wont work at all. So then we have to decide whose labour is worth what, and we are back at the unequal society we have today where some persons labour is decided to be worth billions and others barely anything, unless you come up with some new different way to value labour.