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I disagree. Use value is useful. Consider that in modern countries, energy is less than 5% of GDP, as is agriculture, and domestic water less than 1%. If you on

by orwin 3y ago

I disagree. Use value is useful. Consider that in modern countries, energy is less than 5% of GDP, as is agriculture, and domestic water less than 1%. If you only take into account exchange value, you're missing that information. Production value is useful too. It explain the production cost. Crude oil production value is very low, but it's exchange value is high. I will say that sign value is sometimes declined from exchange or production value (it's pricy/handmade, hence a good status symbol), but I like to use it because I find it useful to understand the price of representation (and it triggers some Marxists)

robertlagrant 3y ago
I'm not saying "use value" isn't useful; I'm saying it's proxied by price. > Production value is useful too. It explain the production cost. Can you give an example?
- orwin 3y ago
  > I'm not saying "use value" isn't useful; I'm saying it's proxied by price. Its not, not really. Water has the most use value of anything you can imagine, and is also one of the cheapest thing to buy. Production value is the effort, material and time spent. It is different from production cost, because production cost will say that a SE Asian time is worth way less than an US citizen time. But modulo material costs, items made in the US by US citizen have the same (production) value as the same item made in China. It will also have the exact same use value, the only difference will be its exchange value (items made in Asia are cheaper), and sign value, as you're more likely to say: 'hey, look, it's made locally' than 'hey, look, it's made in China' if you want to brag about your T-shirt.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > Production value is the effort, material and time spent This is the sort of thing I mean - it seems an artificial distinction to make a political point. E.g. if I rent a warehouse use as a factory building, or buy a machine that can make so many thousand widgets, these don't seem to fall anywhere in the conception of what it takes to make something. And even if it does - so what? What is production value for?

by orwin 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago

I'm not saying "use value" isn't useful; I'm saying it's proxied by price. > Production value is useful too. It explain the production cost. Can you give an example?

orwin 3y ago
> I'm not saying "use value" isn't useful; I'm saying it's proxied by price. Its not, not really. Water has the most use value of anything you can imagine, and is also one of the cheapest thing to buy. Production value is the effort, material and time spent. It is different from production cost, because production cost will say that a SE Asian time is worth way less than an US citizen time. But modulo material costs, items made in the US by US citizen have the same (production) value as the same item made in China. It will also have the exact same use value, the only difference will be its exchange value (items made in Asia are cheaper), and sign value, as you're more likely to say: 'hey, look, it's made locally' than 'hey, look, it's made in China' if you want to brag about your T-shirt.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Production value is the effort, material and time spent This is the sort of thing I mean - it seems an artificial distinction to make a political point. E.g. if I rent a warehouse use as a factory building, or buy a machine that can make so many thousand widgets, these don't seem to fall anywhere in the conception of what it takes to make something. And even if it does - so what? What is production value for?