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This 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 th

This 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 ago
This 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 ago
    fair enough. Maybe my dismissal was too shallow
  - legitster 3y ago
    This 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 ago
  this 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 ago
  Marx 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 ago
    Marx 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 ago
      What 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 ago
I 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.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

This 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 ago
  fair enough. Maybe my dismissal was too shallow
- legitster 3y ago
  This 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 ago
this 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 ago
Marx 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 ago
  Marx 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 ago
    What 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 ago

I 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.