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Yet there are drug and mental health crises, and there are families whose quality of life hasn't improved since the last recessions. I don't believe that progre
by CrackerNews 3y ago
Yet there are drug and mental health crises, and there are families whose quality of life hasn't improved since the last recessions. I don't believe that progress is so neatly linear, and the Hegelian philosophy behind Marx attempts to capture that, IMO.
Labor theory of value does have issues, but I don't think it can be so neatly dismissed either as alternatives appear to have vague criteria for what contributes to value.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoLabor theory of value is incredibly easy to dismiss. Value is about what people will pay for things, not how much work they took to make. Bam there we go.
- zztop44 3y agoThis kind of shallow dismissal could only be posted by someone who hasn’t spent much time thinking about economics, or thinking about why Marx remains one of the most relevant and influential theoreticians amongst people who do spend a lot of time thinking about economics. For a start, Marx understood well that the price assigned to a commodity by a market and its value were often out of sync. If you’re confused about the difference between those things, think about Dogecoin as a particularly extreme example.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoThis kind of shallow dismissal of my shallow dismissal of a frankly idiotic idea that doesn't deserve a deeper dismissal could only be posted by someone who hasn't spent much time thinking about economics, or thinking about why Marx was popular not for his economic thoughts but for his sociological/political ones. Someone being popular doesn't make them right, but Marx was right about many things. Just not about labor theory of value. But here's a deeper dismissal for you anyway https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/fht0ti/marxs_aggregate_labour_theory_of_value/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/fht0ti/marxs_... it even conveniently brings up your doge argument
- consilient 3y ago> This kind of shallow dismissal of my shallow dismissal of a frankly idiotic idea that doesn't deserve a deeper dismissal The labor theory of value was accepted wisdom prior to the late 19th century: it originates with Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It's wrong (or more accurately, not a good conceptual framework) but it's not obviously wrong, let alone "idiotic".
- HDThoreaun 3y agofair enough. Maybe my dismissal was too shallow
- legitster 3y agoThis is misleading. Adam Smith presented this as a possible solution to an economic paradox at the time. But later philosophers came up with much better solutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value There's no reason to believe that Smith wouldn't have latched onto the much better solution. So being hell-bent on the incomplete answer from the 1700s is a unique peculiarity of Marxist theory.
- consilient 3y ago> But later philosophers came up with much better solutions Yes, later than both Smith and Marx. Marginalism didn't go mainstream until the 1890s, though the necessary pieces were there waiting to be assembled from about 1870.
- legitster 3y ago> price assigned to a commodity by a market and its value were often out of sync Based on Marx's own flawed logic! https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-05-02 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-05-02 How much is a glass of water worth? Should it change if it takes me 5 seconds or 5 years to procure? Using labor theory to assign value makes no sense and is not a workable model for anything for anything other than justifying Marx's own circular logic.
- greenie_beans 3y agothis is not what the labor theory of value is. i wrote my interpretation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37411772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37411772
- kieselguhr_kid 3y agoMarx discusses how skill (and factors like machinery, etc) factors into value in Capital vol 1. The idea isn't that any labor on any endeavor creates value at a constant rate across all individuals and all time.
- Natsu 3y agoMarx has some concept of "socially necessary" labor, but it doesn't really make sense because it wants to treat skill as some kind of simple multiplier as if we can assume that a modern doctor's labor is some simple multiple of a random medieval peasant's labor in diagnosing an illness, which is just a silly and oversimplified model. Honestly it reminds me of like Marx's non-rigorous "eh whatever" approach to dividing by zero in his mathematical work. While one can define division by zero in non-standard analysis, that involves some actual rigor in how your treat it according to your definitions, not just shrugging your shoulders and doing it.
- kieselguhr_kid 3y agoWhat you're getting at vis-a-vis highly skilled labor is known in Marxist economics as the labor reduction problem, and it's complicated (enough so that I wouldn't do it justice trying to elaborate the approaches in the time I have to respond). Marx died with it unsolved and it's a matter of discussion to this day. But you're conflating that problem with the concept of socially necessary labor, which is different and actually addresses the problem you posed (in Capital Vol 1, in the difficult early chapters). In order to produce value, the labor must be socially necessary, and the labor of any number of unskilled workers towards a highly complex problem (eg, treating a rare cancer) would not be socially necessary. It doesn't even have to be that complex. I don't have the skills necessary to make a wedding cake, and any attempt I make to do so would be so inept that it wouldn't be socially necessary labor. Can't speak to the division by zero, but it doesn't come up in any of Marx important work. His mathematical manuscripts don't have any significant relationship to his work on political economy.
- lottin 3y agoI spend a lot of time thinking about economics, and spend a lot of time surrounded by people who also spend a lot of time thinking about economics, being an economist. The labour theory of value, along with every other objective theory of value, was abandoned by economists more than 100 years ago, because it failed to explain how and why economic agents assign value to economic goods, which is what economists are interested in.
- coliveira 3y agoYou just dismissed you incorrect idea of labor value theory. Go back to read about the subject. To "disprove" Marx you should at least read his damn book and show that you know what you're talking about.
- greenie_beans 3y agothis is a typical misinterpretation of the labor theory of value. it's not the silicon valley "I Am Adding Value" SaaS ideal. the free market assigns the value created by laborers. it's as simple as that. the buyer wouldn't get this value in their life, at a price the market decided they pay, without the work of the laborer. the value wouldn't be created without the laborer, or any of the capital or tools that it took to create labor (since labor created the capital and the tools). much like machines, it's labor all the way down.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoI didn't misinterpret shit. The amount of work something takes too create has very little to do with its value. Labor theory of value would be a joke if it wasn't so popular for some reason. Instead it's actively disinforming people > it's labor all the way down This is completely orthogonal to value. Sure things wouldn't exist without people to make them. That doesn't mean that the labor it takes to make something constitutes its value.
- greenie_beans 3y agolol you are proving my point that you don't understand the labor theory of value. even adam smith was with it.
- andrekandre 3y agowhat is you definition of value? i feel you and the other poster are mybe talking past each other..
- oneshtein 3y ago(Not an original poster.) $1 banknote is equal to $10000000 banknote in labor.
- kieselguhr_kid 3y agoCan you help us out by articulating what you think value is, and how it's derived?
- zardo 3y agoExchange value is only a measure of value. A theory of value is about explaining what makes value, not just measuring it.
- lottin 3y agoIt's the only way we have to measure value. And in order to test a theory of value at some point you'll have to measure value.
- zardo 3y ago> It's the only way we have to measure value. No it's not. For one, it can only assign values to things which are actually exchanged. When you look at things on the scale of states, this isn't always a possibility. You can't put the ISS on craigslist and see what it sells for.
- legitster 3y agoValue being subjective and fluid is exactly what makes modern society function. I may value having lots of children. You may value not having lots of children. Expecting there to be an objective universal value on everything is a fool's errand. I trade my time at work to sit at a comfy desk and type for money, and that is work. And I will negotiate for more time and money so that I may spend more time lifting heavy things at a gym. Funnily enough that is leisure and it costs me money. It is in the asymmetry of needs that we create excess value by working for each other taking care of the things they do not want to do for themselves. Labor theory makes no sense in how people actually choose to go about their lives. Which is why modern economics is so focused on how to just maximise as much generic utility out of a market. And it is usually Marxists who are actually the most obsessed about counting up the little green slips of paper that don't mean anything. You reference Hegel, but it is specifically his idea that progress is inevitable. Which is exactly why I reject Marx. Marx believed that making functioning plans was useless since progress was inevitable once unleashed. But Marx was a leech who counted on his friends for his subsistence and others to actually test his ideas. Progress is only made by intentional and planned efforts to deal with problems rather than just criticize and shake your fist at society.
- coliveira 3y ago> Marx believed that making functioning plans was useless since progress was inevitable You're taking ideas out of your pants and putting on Marx's mouth. At least be honest and say you never read him and hate his ideas without knowing what they are.