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Value based only on hours of labor is far too simplistic and leads to perverse conclusions. E.g. Is it just as valuable for a farmer to till his fields by hand

by greggyb 12y ago

Value based only on hours of labor is far too simplistic and leads to perverse conclusions. E.g. Is it just as valuable for a farmer to till his fields by hand with a hoe and produce food at a subsistence level as it is for another farmer to use modern equipment and provide food for 100 other individuals? This is a rough approximation - pre-industrial farming population was >90%[0] and modern farming population is <1%[1] in industrialized nations. [0] Based on a figure from this article which gives a figure for 1862 in the US http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/ [1]http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html

dllthomas 12y ago
Do you know if those numbers include people indirectly putting their hours toward that farming? People who designed and built the tractor, people who pulled the tractor fuel out of the ground and refined it - and who built the machines to help with that, &c... So far as I understand it, LtV would include those things. Note that I nonetheless believe you're correct that there's been a dramatic dropoff in the portion of labor we put toward farming, directly or indirectly.
- greggyb 12y ago
  In the case of the pre-industrial (I realize my source is mid-industrial revolution, but we can agree the percentage involved in agriculture when moving back in time, I hope) figure, the vast majority of the support labor of farming was done directly by farmers (necessary because they also made up the majority of the workforce). In the modern figure, these hours are explicitly not included. The US is a net food exporter, though[0], so I feel comfortable with the conclusion that a modern farmer is roughly two orders of magnitude more productive than a pre-industrial farmer. Even if we disagree on the reasonableness of that conclusion, I think it is an untenable position that the modern farmer is not at least one order of magnitude more productive even accounting for indirect inputs. Please let me know if you disagree on this, as it would pull the conversation in a different direction and I like to at least be on the same page, even if we're currently at odds about what it says. [0]I'm using the second document available on this page: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/agricultural_exports_and_imports.html http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/agri...
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    For this conversation, I think the important point is that farm labor is substantially more effective, and I certainly agree with that. Quantifying that is tricky and I don't have the bandwidth to do the analysis necessary to agree or disagree.

by greggyb 12y ago

dllthomas 12y ago

Do you know if those numbers include people indirectly putting their hours toward that farming? People who designed and built the tractor, people who pulled the tractor fuel out of the ground and refined it - and who built the machines to help with that, &c... So far as I understand it, LtV would include those things. Note that I nonetheless believe you're correct that there's been a dramatic dropoff in the portion of labor we put toward farming, directly or indirectly.

greggyb 12y ago
In the case of the pre-industrial (I realize my source is mid-industrial revolution, but we can agree the percentage involved in agriculture when moving back in time, I hope) figure, the vast majority of the support labor of farming was done directly by farmers (necessary because they also made up the majority of the workforce). In the modern figure, these hours are explicitly not included. The US is a net food exporter, though[0], so I feel comfortable with the conclusion that a modern farmer is roughly two orders of magnitude more productive than a pre-industrial farmer. Even if we disagree on the reasonableness of that conclusion, I think it is an untenable position that the modern farmer is not at least one order of magnitude more productive even accounting for indirect inputs. Please let me know if you disagree on this, as it would pull the conversation in a different direction and I like to at least be on the same page, even if we're currently at odds about what it says. [0]I'm using the second document available on this page: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/agricultural_exports_and_imports.html http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/agri...
- dllthomas 12y ago
  For this conversation, I think the important point is that farm labor is substantially more effective, and I certainly agree with that. Quantifying that is tricky and I don't have the bandwidth to do the analysis necessary to agree or disagree.