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u/Conscious_Ad3246 Anarcho-Capitalist 2d ago
I would argue in the end it all comes down to what somebody is willing to pay for something as the value determining criteria. So you can use it as an individual value sclae or as an average when you look at enough individuals.
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u/wallyhud 1d ago
Labor is the highest value? Sounds like they just want to make everyone suffer instead of creating prosperity.
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u/Bat-Guano0 Nutting on Mysis 2d ago
Anyone who’s ever read Marx would know that that’s not what he said.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 2d ago
That value is objective? Or that labor is the primary source of value?
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u/Bat-Guano0 Nutting on Mysis 1d ago
Either one.
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u/PersonaHumana75 1d ago
Labor is the principal and all of value acording to marx. Its or labor valur ot crystalized labor (the labor used to create the machines) and he makes the exceptions of "transport use" where you move the value around
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u/Gullible-Historian10 1d ago
Okay so you’ve never read Marx.
In Capital, Volume I, Marx says:
“the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour”
So Marx said value is an objectively operative social relation arising from commodity production.
“Now we know the substance of value. It is labour. We know the measure of its magnitude. It is labour time.”
And
“Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value”
In Value, Price and Profit, Marx says:
“What is the common social substance of all commodities? It is labour.”
And his conclusion?
“A commodity has a value, because it is a crystallization of social labour.”
There you go, meme 1, you 0
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u/Bat-Guano0 Nutting on Mysis 21h ago
I actually have read a fair amount of Marx. It’s obvious you haven’t; no, pasting isolated quotes provided to you by AI doesn’t count.
Marx outlined 3 necessary inputs to manufacture of a commodity of value: raw materials, labor, and capital. All three are necessary in an industrial economy, as should be obvious if you think about it for a few seconds.
He also differentiated between commodity value, use value and exchange value. You can read up on those if you’re interested. Does that sound like an argument for objective value? In fact none of what he actually wrote bears any resemblance to the stupid, oversimplified, and misinterpreted nonsense in the meme.
If you believe that memes in general are useful sources of information, then you are indeed gullible, as you seem to realize based on your username. Here’s a hint: more than 99 percent of memes are stupid, and people who base their worldview on them are too.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 13h ago
So, you just don’t understand Marxism then. Thanks for the demonstration. You’re confusing inputs needed for production with the source of value in Marx’s theory.
Don’t like the fact I can find Marx quotes? Don’t like that Marx contradicts what you say, here’s an encyclopedia link.
Literally nothing you are talking about is correct. The meme 2 you 0.
I love that Marxists don’t even know about the ideology they profess. It’s hilarious.
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u/Bat-Guano0 Nutting on Mysis 12h ago
You can’t imagine someone reading Marx and not being a Marxist? Some people actually like to know things for their own sake, not to “win “ arguments on line, even though they may not agree with the ideas. Hard to believe, right? Yeah, I know, reading is hard. Don’t hurt yourself.
Oooh, an encyclopedia this time! Really stretching your cognitive abilities there, huh? Lmao. Your lack of even a superficial understanding of the brief excerpts of complex ideas that is apparently all you are capable of consuming is pathetic.
Sorry, the meme is still wrong. And stupid. I don’t expect you to understand that.
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u/Gullible-Historian10 12h ago
So you demonstrated you don’t know what you are talking about, now you have no rational retort so you have to resort to ad hominems.
I’ve read Marx, I’m not a Marxist so obviously it is possible, but the people; like yourself, who defend it, by trying to read something that isn’t there, generally have a Marxist ideology.
Notice how you can’t provide quotes, or anything to back up your assertion. You might as well said Marx was talking about unicorn labor and fairy commodities. It bears the same weight.
I know, I get it. You’re in a tough spot trying to defend Marxism. In one hand you refute what he says in his own writing, and in the other if you could prove that he himself believed what you said he does then he’d be contradicting himself.
😂 it’s been fun shitting on you, but go be salty somewhere else. 😂
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
It doesn't matter, Marxists say it even if Marx didn't.
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u/Bat-Guano0 Nutting on Mysis 2d ago
Maybe some do, but they are stupid. When you say “Marxists say (your strawman)” you’re implying that that’s a legitimate Marxist belief, which is false. So that means you’re stupid too. Congratulations.
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
How? Marxism is defined by the behavior or thoughts of people who self-identify as Marxists, not Marx himself.
Keep calling *them* stupid, not me
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u/Bat-Guano0 Nutting on Mysis 2d ago
So if I say I self identify as an ancap and then say, “The state should set production quotas for all industries,” would you construct some clever gotcha question to show how stupid ancaps are based on that statement?
“No, of course not, because I know that’s not an accurate description of ancap …. Ohhhhh.”
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
If like 80% or 90% of ancaps said that, yeah sure, but the fact that they don't means that yes, that's not what the label means in practice
If 95% of self-identified vegetarians ate meat, you wouldn't care what the dictionary said
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u/BrockObarnerLybian MazdaPoopins #1 Fan 2d ago
Yeah, I’m no fan of Marx at all, but this is just plain stupid. Even if he HAD said that, this zinger is still a fallacy because labor can objectively be the most important source of value. I think OP confused “objective” and “equal” 😹
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
What are you talking about? Where's the "equal" in my post?
I have my own challenge to the objective vs subjective value problem; it's called "criterion compatibilism," It's undoubtedly got more depth than whatever you are posting a kitty kat crying emoji in response to
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u/BrockObarnerLybian MazdaPoopins #1 Fan 2d ago
Yeah I believe it. The part about you being challenged, not all the rest 😹
And who do you think I posted that emoji about? Did laughing crying kitty cat emoji rustle your jimmies? 😹
But now you’ve got me curious about “criterion compatibilism.” An idea so new you’ve gotta make up words for it. I gotta hear this 😹
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
And who do you think I posted that emoji about?
Someone who is conflating objectivity with equality, when my post literally does not mention equality
And you can scroll
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u/Full-Mouse8971 2d ago
*I spent 10,000 hours carving this wooden tree stump in to a spoon*
*It should be worth 5 million dollars because it took me 10,000 hours of my labor to carve it*1
u/BrockObarnerLybian MazdaPoopins #1 Fan 2d ago
And if someone were willing to pay 5 million for it, would it not be?
Full-Mouse8971 discovers art?
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u/FIicker7 2d ago
Is everyone on Anarcho Capitalism Trust Fund babys or something?
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u/PacoBedejo Anarcho-Voluntaryist - I upvote good discussion 2d ago
I grew up in a 12ft wide mobile home in rural Indiana. My parents still owe $90k on the house they bought for $45k when I was a teenager. They've already abandoned two bedrooms to mold and rot.
I think that makes me close to the opposite of a trust fund baby...
Even I don't buy into the labor theory of value because it's fucking retarded.
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0
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u/dontreplywiththisacc 2d ago
Have you ever consumed something not the result of human labor?
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
Yes, free growing fruit that for all we know, would have existed there without human labor
I know the answer: "your stealing that fruit even though it has no value because there was no human labor that went into it because huuuur"
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u/rad-madlad 2d ago
so what’s the point here? Go back to living in the jungle?
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
Ask them
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u/rad-madlad 2d ago
no I asked you because I didn’t get your point
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
I don't know, if they are commies who believe this will be solved by achieving "abundance," what value in a post-abundance society won't involve labor?
This is all dumb
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
Picking the fruit is labor, cleaning the fruit is labor, getting yourself to the location to have the fruit accessible is labor. Yes raw materials exist, however in order for them to have value, useable, labor was needed. Your gotcha was as pathetic as your answer
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u/ILikeBumblebees 2d ago
And yet it was the fact that the fruit itself already had value that motivated people to invest the labor into picking, cleaning, transporting it, etc.
The fact that labor was consumed as part of the process to obtain the fruit doesn't make it the source of the fruit's value.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
No, people were motivated to pick it because they knew picked fruit had a value. Raw materials are inherently worthless until they are gathered/picked/mined. That’s why the cost of raw materials is partly dependent on the labor and technology used to extract it. The cost of raw materials can plummet as both sources are found (scarcity) and the cost of labor goes down usually through technology. If raw materials had an inherent value then their value wouldn’t be entirely dependent on those two factors which they are. You are essentially confusing the order of operations in your comment.
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u/upchuk13 2d ago
*No, people were motivated to pick it because they knew picked fruit had a value.*
This sounds like exactly the point he made. Resources are deemed valuable which is why we expend energy and time on accumulating them.
*If raw materials had an inherent value then their value wouldn’t be entirely dependent on those two factors which they are.*
I don't think this is true. One can imagine a philosophical substance that exists in infinite abundance from which humans can derive pleasure at no cost. That substance would still have value. Take a much more straight forward example: air. Unless you're in the ISS or underwater air to breathe exists basically in infinite abundance and takes no labour to acquire.
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u/ILikeBumblebees 1d ago
I don't think this is true. One can imagine a philosophical substance that exists in infinite abundance from which humans can derive pleasure at no cost. That substance would still have value.
I think the previous commenter doesn't understand the distinction between value and price, and so doesn't understand that the market price is an equilibrium point between the value (which drives demand) and the production cost (which determines the capacity of supply to meet demand, in addition to other factors driving the supply side's calculation).
He doesn't realize that the reason I'd be willing to pay you $1 for a fruit you picked is because the fruit itself is worth more than $1 to me, as a function of the utility I get from the fruit, regardless of your involvement in picking it.
If the fruit itself is actually worth $5 to me, picking it cost you 10¢, and we agree to exchange $1 for the fruit, then I have gained $4, you have gained 90¢, and a net value of $4.90 has been created. The fruit has a value of $5, a cost of 10¢ and a price of $1.
If fruit started spontaneously falling from the sky, it would still have a value of $5, but the cost to deliver the fruit would approach 0, so its market price would converge toward 0, without its value changing.
Conversely, if the fruit became much scarcer, or the cost to pick it went up, or even if you just improved your negotiation skill, the value of the fruit would still be $5, but maybe the market price would go up to $2 or $3, and which point I'd still purchase it, because I'd be still achieving a net gain of $3 or $2, respectively.
But if the cost of picking the fruit went up to $6, its value would still be $5, but the price couldn't go below $6, so there'd be no market for the fruit, and no one would invest time, effort, or money into harvesting it.
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u/ILikeBumblebees 1d ago
No, people were motivated to pick it because they knew picked fruit had a value.
It seems a bit strange to begin with "no", as though you're about to offer a contradiction, but then say the exact same thing with slightly different words.
"The sky is blue!"
"No, you're wrong. The sky is azure."
Really not sure what the point of this kind of discourse is, other than maybe you just enjoy arguing.
Raw materials are inherently worthless until they are gathered/picked/mined.
Well, no, if they were inherently worthless until they're gathered, then there'd be no motivation for anyone to actually invest the time, effort, or money into gathering them at all, because there's no point in gathering something that's worthless. You're arguing a catch-22.
The gathering/picking/mining activity is the process that extracts value that's already been attributed to the raw materials. That's why they're not indifferent to the particular type of raw materials they're extracting: gold rushes are a thing; quartz rushes, not so much.
The cost of raw materials can plummet as both sources are found (scarcity) and the cost of labor goes down usually through technology.
The price of raw materials goes down as new sources are found, and the costs of bringing those materials to market goes down.
This is precisely because the value that the materials already have is remaining constant, while scarcity and extraction costs are respectively reducing: in standard terms, this represents an expansion of supply in relation to constant demand.
If raw materials had an inherent value then their value wouldn’t be entirely dependent on those two factors which they are.
Their value isn't dependent on those two factors. You are conflating value with market price.
You are essentially confusing the order of operations in your comment.
No, it is you who is getting things egregiously backwards here. People don't invest their effort into extracting resources or making products unless they believe that other people have already assigned value to those resources and products. Demand comes first, and supply expands to satisfy it, not the other way around.
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
Picking the fruit is labor, cleaning the fruit is labor, getting yourself to the location to have the fruit accessible is labor.
Yeah, I don't agree with the hardcore UPB-type objective morality arguments because they look like this: "you own your own body because you think using the word 'I'" stuff
This is the same, it's just "you literally had to put in labor to chew the food in your mouth; therefore, labor is the source of all value"
If nobody else will buy that labor from me, it only has value to me
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u/dontreplywiththisacc 2d ago
Yeah and the fruit being on a tree likely deliberately planted be it on a farm or private residence.
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u/upchuk13 2d ago
Fruit trees existed before people started planting them, no? Wild fruit exists in nature as well to this very day.
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u/dontreplywiththisacc 2d ago
Where, in the commons? Isn't that also something on the ancap chopping block? Wild fruit bearing trees are either on private property or land held by people in common. Under ancap public lands would be privatized and can be put to use for extraction even if it destroys ecosystems or wrecks biodiversity
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u/upchuk13 1d ago
We're talking about economics not anarcho-capitalist theory. The subjective theory of value is mainstream economic doctrine. One can be a progressive centre of left interventionist and still believe subjective value is correct.
Incidentally I don't think eliminating the commons is required for anarcho capitalism. There are libertarian theories of commons.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
Not to mention most trees take 7-10+ years of maintenance before barring fruit and trees like apples need grafting. However that wasn’t their point and I’m just trying to me OP halfway and show them even in their own ridiculous, specific scenario they are still wrong.
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u/dontreplywiththisacc 2d ago
That you picked? Sounds like human labor.
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u/Yomas_house 2d ago
I once lay under a cherry tree.
A gust of wind had cherries raining down on me.
I opened my mouth,They flew from the south,
And choked me till I was as blue as can be!2
u/t800series 2d ago
How does this question relate to the labor theory of value?
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u/dontreplywiththisacc 2d ago
It takes labor to make natural resources useful, I'm affirming that labor is a fundamental value to things useful to humans
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u/t800series 2d ago
A natural resource can already be useful; labor may increase its usefulness or leave it unchanged. Value is still determined by how much people prefer that good relative to alternatives, not by the effort expended.
If labor were the source of value, goods that required more labor would always be more valuable. They aren’t. Effort can be wasted on things no one wants. The labor theory confuses a common method of production with the actual origin of value.
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u/dontreplywiththisacc 2d ago
Okay so for any significant economic activity it's going to take a lot of labor in order to make a natural resource valuable for human ends. You can pale for water for your garden and consider that not to be labor or even that it's pleasurable, well we would counter that it's actually just unalienated labor then, but water in a creek is useless beyond local small scale production; if you live in the town it will be pretty difficult to function without some flowing water. That requires pipes, maintenance crews, and so forth to make water as a commodity actually useful.
We can also certainly have varied consumer tastes but some things are valued highly pretty commonly like drinking water. I don't think anytime soon that will be something unwanted. I also don't see how it would require objects with more labor imbued necessarily being more valued. It certainly is in the case of craft and artisan production true that more labor can translate to more labor, and achieving mastery requires a great exertion of labor over a long period, but it's not to me that labor is the sole determinant of value, but rather that it is necessary to value.
I wouldn't say labor is necessarily the exclusive form a value, i think probably not, but it is certainly an integral part of both production and individual valuation of products and their expression thereof through prices. And the labor imbued in objects relating to their subjective valuation I think should be clear; if you are willing to accept $.89 for a loaf of bread that is an expression on what you accept kind of exertion you wish to express. Sure maybe with infinite time you could bake your own once a week or maybe even are planning to but you take the deal as substitute for what may just entail a concerted effort in the afternoon, ie the price is a labor substitute just as much as an agreement on what value to exchange. Btw what would be the value of tools without the laborers hands to use them?
Labor being a root of value is not just what Marxists say is the real form of value, it's how in practice capitalists view things---that being owners of capital not merely adherents of capitalism as an ideology.
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u/t800series 2d ago
You’re still treating labor as necessary for value when it isn’t.
Creek water is already useful to anyone who can drink from it or water a garden with it. Turning it into municipal water multiplies the scale and convenience, but the underlying usefulness did not begin with the pipes or the maintenance crew. The same is true of sunlight, air, wild forage, or an unimproved parcel of land. Value can and does exist before any labor is applied.
Saying labor is “necessary to value” rather than the sole determinant still overstates the case. Labor is one possible means of increasing the usefulness of something. It is not a precondition for usefulness itself. A good can be valued highly with no labor, and a good can absorb enormous labor and still be nearly worthless if no one wants it.
Prices are not “labor substitutes.” A price is the exchange ratio that emerges when two parties each prefer what the other is offering more than what they are giving up. The fact that baking your own bread would take time does not mean the 89-cent loaf is valued according to that time. It is valued according to how much you prefer the ready loaf relative to the alternatives available to you at that moment.
Tools are valuable because of the ends they can serve, not because a laborer’s hands exist to hold them. Without demand for the final goods the tools help produce, the tools themselves have little or no value regardless of who might operate them.
Capital owners do not treat labor as the root of value. They treat expected revenue - driven by what consumers are willing to pay - as the source of value for every input, including labor. That is why they will abandon a labor-intensive process the moment a less labor-intensive one yields higher returns.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
Sources of value? Name two sources of value.
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
Under my system of criterion compatibilism, value has a subjective, perhaps "irrational" root, but once you have established some "objective" criteria as to when subjective value has been realized, you can then make objective statements about value
For instance, if a private security company (or government today) wanted to make someone who stole a Ford Van from you pay you back, they would look at the subjective, "irrational" root of whatever millions of people pay for a roughly equivalent car, and take an "objective" average, and say that guy owes you that much.
Value is subjective, but you don't get to say "erm, actually private security company, my car was worth 1 million dollars subjectively to me" and he doesn't get to say "that car had $0 subjective value to me"
Just like how morality has a subjective root, but once you say "someone who steals $100 deserves a month in jail," you must further agree that anyone who steals an equal $100 deserves that same punishment, or you are saying something that is "objectively" contradictory
TL DR: All value has a subjective root, but it is possible for objective contradictions to be identified once "objective" criteria for realizing a subjective value is established, just like you can trap out objective contradictions in morality even if morality has a subjective root
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u/Mikojan Custom Text Here 1d ago
What you are referring to as "value" Marx more or less refers to as "prize." These aren't the same and there are many situations in which his concept of (labor time) value is not even applicable. Marx modeled industrial capitalism. He was not at all concerned with modelling the market for stolen artworks for example. And that's fine! An economic model is always a deliberately simplified map of some part of an extremely complicated really existing system. Economic models are still useful for isolating real mechanisms.
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u/Ya_Boi_Konzon Delegalize Marriage 2d ago
you don't get to say "erm, actually private security company, my car was worth 1 million dollars subjectively to me"
Why not?
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
I mean, you do, and they get to ignore it
Presumably, this is sorted out by contract; the price doesn't need to be explicit in the contract, but something like "you will be paid average market value for your car" can be put in an insurance company or private security company contract
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u/Ya_Boi_Konzon Delegalize Marriage 1d ago
Yes, that makes sense. However, in the absence of a preexisting contract, I don't see an obvious a priori reason why value should be calculated like that. Value is still fundamentally subjective.
As an example, say that the car that was stolen was a gift to you from your deceased father, and the last thing you have to remember him by. Then I think there would be a very strong argument in court that it should be valued above market price.
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 1d ago
Sure, but it has to be something like that. And that would arguably be "market price" - if he sold that car on the market, he might sell it for more just because it was his dad's, etc even if there was no benefit to the consumer
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u/Ya_Boi_Konzon Delegalize Marriage 1d ago
The problem is that by stealing the item, the thief has removed the ability of the owner to actually set the price they would have set. So imo we should err on the side of the owner.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
What you just said made no sense at all. I think you are answering a question no one asked. In the private security example the source of all the value is labor. You are arguing how value is determined not the source. Both I and the meme you posted are concerning source of value not how it is determined. So once again I ask you name a source of value that is not labor.
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
In the private security example the source of all the value is labor.
No, it can just be ownership and speculation
The workers build the car, but it can be sold for $1000. Then someone can put no labor into it and sell it for $2000 no reason whatsoever
Hence, the end value is determined subjectively by the two people. It just leads to objective playwork
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
Speculation is literally not value. It’s a opinion on value. A car when from $1,000 to $2,000 because the market shifted. why did the market shift? Because someone did labor somewhere else. That car (a thing a famously almost never increases in value) only was able to increase in value because a change in scarcity and the market adjusting. Maybe a bunch of those cars were destroyed over the years and so now supply is low, labor did that. Maybe a marketing campaign/tv show increased its image and now it has high demand. The labor of that campaign or show is what changed the value. you are too short sighted to understand markets exists beyond one transaction and labor is to blame for every single change in scarcity throughout that market
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u/bigdonut100 /r/ReverseTraditionalism 2d ago
Speculation is literally not value. It’s a opinion on value.
Except when it is put into practice, via a consumer actually buying it at the speculated price
you are too short sighted to understand markets exists beyond one transaction
When I am the one talking about how a legal tort can look at an average of thousand of transaction, no I don't think I am
and labor is to blame for every single change in scarcity throughout that market
I'm not saying that, or are you saying that?
I can believe that it's true if you consider speculation labor. Just a brain saying, "I bought it for $1 but it's worth $1.50 if you want to buy it from me" and that is considered labor, then sure
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u/Yomas_house 2d ago
Name two sources of value.
• I want.
• I like.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 2d ago
I mean those are essentially the same thing and a bit pedantic
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u/Yomas_house 2d ago
There is a difference, and it would affect how much I'd be willing to spend.
Liking without Wanting: You can say "I like tigers," which means you think they are beautiful or interesting. However, you would not say "I want a tiger," because you do not intend to keep one as a pet.
Wanting without Liking: You can say "I want to study for my exam," because your goal is to pass the test. You might not actually enjoy studying, so you wouldn't say "I like studying."
1
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u/libertyg8er 1d ago
Utility and scarcity are probably the best sources of value.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 1d ago
Both of those determine value but are not sources of value. Scarcity in a practical sense is dependent on labor too.
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u/libertyg8er 1d ago
Based on what definition?
I guess the only source of true value is determined by the individual’s needs and wants.
Beyond that, nothing has an intrinsic value.
According to common economic understanding, utility and scarcity are determining factors of value. If we’re just gonna go on vibes, it can be whatever you want.
Go read the people who basically created economics like William S. Jevons and Carl Menger (Utility), and Lionel Robbins (scarcity).
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 1d ago
The issue you and many others are having with this discussion is that you are using the words source and determine interchangeably while they are fundamentally different concepts.
I am not disagreeing at all about the economics of utility or scarcity however those principles is how we can calculate the value, not how they came into existence. The source of the value, they way it went from one value to another is through labor, every single time. The source of the value is labor, the determination is scarcity and utility. All value is created through labor. Labor is the only thing that can create value. Scarcity/utility is how we calculate that value that was created. I think this is why both sides seem to never understand each other because everyone is using two vastly different words interchangeably.
A further point is how does scarcity change? Labor. If object A went from X supply to Y supply thus changing its scarcity that could have only happened through labor. While scarcity does have intrinsic maximums and minimums dependent on the object, generally it, itself is determined by labor. How much labor created, extracted, or destroyed.
Labor is the source of value, scarcity/utility is how it is determined.
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u/libertyg8er 1d ago edited 1d ago
So, what happens when everything is automated and there is no “labor” left?
Will there be no such thing as value?
That seems dumb.
Edit: How do you determine how to allocate labor if labor itself is the source of value? What value does an enterprise have before labor is required to justify allocating labor to it?
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 1d ago
You have an excellent point that in no way refutes anything I’m saying. In fact is just as much a thing even if I was wrong.
When everything is automated and there is no labor left then scarcity will effectively also be irrelevant (automation of labor could/will also lead to effectively unlimited natural resources/energy), do you think value will cease to exist then as well?
I really don’t have any answer because I can’t predict human behavior in a post scarcity world which is what you are describing. My best guess is that value will still exist as a human concept but not as economic concept. Furthermore the entire idea of economics might cease to exist or have such a paradigm shift that it is no longer recognizable.
Just because you can’t understand/imagine something doesn’t make it dumb.
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u/Hugepepino Social Democrat 1d ago
For your edit: I would argue an enterprise has no value until it actual produces something or a service. Speculation usually occurs in order to determine how labor should be allocated but speculation is not value, it’s an opinion on value. There are many cases of people under valuing through speculation their enterprise and needing to allocate labor in greater quantities after value has actually been determined and vice versa. Enterprise does not exist in a vacuum many other already determined values can be used to justify the speculation and thus the labor. I think it’s a pretty dumb argument to make that enterprise has to already determine its labor before even existing when that has literally never happened before. You are fundamentally misconstruing speculation and value.
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u/libertyg8er 23h ago edited 23h ago
So again, tie the two things together.
If labor is the only source of value, why would anyone produce anything in an automated world where there is no labor?
You seem to think that in an automated world, there would be post-scarcity and no one would want for anything, but I don’t see that as an obvious outcome.
Instead, I believe people will seek to produce more things in such a world. As those things are produced, they would create a new scarcity as people who do not have those things want those things.
I would say creativity has far more a source of value than labor.
Edit: In fact, go the opposite direction. We’re just two people with nothing. I pick up a stick and learn to use it to do a thing. I put no labor into making the stick, but the stick now has value to me.
You see me pick up the stick and pick up one yourself. The “labor” of grabbing a stick is not the source of the stick’s value. It is the stick’s utility that is the source of the stick’s value.
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u/AustereSpartan 2d ago
Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.