icantfindaname posted:ahahahahahahahahahahahahahha It's not my fault you made stupid, grandiose claims because you're an economics/finance major and an undergraduate. But hey, keep talking about how American liberalism just loving looooves CEO salaries. JeffersonClay posted:First, argument from popularity is a logical fallacy. Appeal to authority is not. We might care what most economists think about economics, but what most people think in general isn't very useful. Both of them are fallacious, you idiot, and this isn't about whether popularity determines truth. You're not reading what I'm saying, so I can say that I want to shove a bar of sodium up your rear end and cackle as you burn to death from the inside out, because you'll never actually read it. quote:Second, the examples you offer are not inconsistent with a utility framework. People sell their labor because the wage is worth more to the individual than the alternative (more leisure time and less money). These same people might believe that they are overpaid-- being paid more than they estimate an employer gains in benefit from their labor, or just generally being paid more than the average wage for that work. Or they might feel that their employer gains far more value from their labor than they are being paid, or that they are being paid below the market price for their labor, and thus consider themselves underpaid. The framework assumes that people disagree about the value of things and that when they engage in voluntary exchange their preferences are revealed. They value the item they traded away less than the item they received in return. None of this is incompatible with nuance like: People believe that they deserve more pay for working harder than other people, because they believe (like, actually believe, not your ivory-tower nonsense about what they believe) that you get paid for working, not because the boss feels like it. People believe that a manager is overpaid because he doesn't do poo poo, or seem to do poo poo, not because of your gobble gobble gobble blather. Business owners, if they aren't part of the elite, believe that they pay people according to what they're actually worth. They believe that it's possible to figure this out. You have utterly failed to overcome lingering Marxist and pre-Marxist ideas in the economy, except among the elites who benefit most from a belief system where there's nothing wrong with $200 million golden parachutes, because obviously shareholders believed it was worth it!
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Nov 13, 2014 02:54
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The absolute funniest thing is that people are saying redistributive taxes are necessary when they believe value can be created ex nihilo. Decoupling wealth from any actual production process means that wealth redistribution actually is punishing people for being rich, since you can just uplift people out of poverty by creating sufficient wealth to do so.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:07
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Effectronica posted:I mean, it's the only real option I didn't ask if you had faith in it, I asked how is it going to be relevant in the 21st century. Why would I, an individual who despises the system under which I live, choose Marxist struggle over apathy? What does it offer exactly? Well, except exhausting debates about the definitions of value and capitalist exploitation...
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Nov 13, 2014 03:20
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Marxism definitely isn't dead considering it's still a huge ideology in Latin America and one of the only factions actually capable of standing up to ISIS in Syria is a Marxist faction.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:26
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Friendly Tumour posted:I didn't ask if you had faith in it, I asked how is it going to be relevant in the 21st century. Why would I, an individual who despises the system under which I live, choose Marxist struggle over apathy? What does it offer exactly? Well, except exhausting debates about the definitions of value and capitalist exploitation... This assumes that everyone has an equal chance of picking apathy or engagement. Some people are always going to be apathetic, some are going to actively engage, everyone else falls somewhere between the two. Like, this is in the broadest possible sense here. More concretely, Marxist minority parties are still important in many parts of the world (Germany, India) or have fairly large bases of support (Japan) and these will still be relevant within the 21st century unless/until something displaces Marxism as the central focus for leftism.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:29
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Effectronica posted:Both of them are fallacious, you idiot No, appeal to authority is not a logical fallacy. You're thinking of appeal to false authority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority quote:People believe that they deserve more pay for working harder than other people, because they believe (like, actually believe, not your ivory-tower nonsense about what they believe) that you get paid for working, not because the boss feels like it. People believe that a manager is overpaid because he doesn't do poo poo, or seem to do poo poo, not because of your gobble gobble gobble blather. Business owners, if they aren't part of the elite, believe that they pay people according to what they're actually worth. They believe that it's possible to figure this out. You have utterly failed to overcome lingering Marxist and pre-Marxist ideas in the economy, except among the elites who benefit most from a belief system where there's nothing wrong with $200 million golden parachutes, because obviously shareholders believed it was worth it! Do Marxists believe that people who work harder should be paid more? I was pretty certain that they believed "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". What about people who are naturally stronger or more talented? Do they also deserve more pay? How do you tell the difference between hard work and work enhanced by talent? Effectronica posted:The absolute funniest thing is that people are saying redistributive taxes are necessary when they believe value can be created ex nihilo. Decoupling wealth from any actual production process means that wealth redistribution actually is punishing people for being rich, since you can just uplift people out of poverty by creating sufficient wealth to do so. Who thinks this? One of the more pithy slogans derived from mainstream economics is "there's no such thing as a free lunch". Mainstream economists believe that value can be increased through both production (turning raw materials and labor into products and services that people want) and distribution (transferring the products to the people that value them the most). I add value to a pig by hunting, butchering and smoking it, and then combining it with bread, lettuce and tomatoes. I can add additional value to that pig by allowing the person who wants the BLT the most to eat it. People who hate pork and love pigs might think I've reduced the value of the pig by killing it, and reduced the value of the bread lettuce and tomato by tainting them with pork. All of that can coexist without difficulty in a utilitarian framework.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:34
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JeffersonClay posted:
How does trade "create" value? Law of diminishing returns is that one gets less use value out of additional production or consumption of the same thing past a certain point. Trade doesn't create value, it prevents waste of it. If you like the taste of five tacos, but not so much the taste of ten tacos, then you can trade away some of your tacos to a friend for their crisp refreshing mt dew baha blast. The trading doesn't make the tacos any tastier. It does not imbue the tacos with any extra flavor. You would have to change the material composition of the taco through adding more materials (spices) and/or labor (extra prep to change the initial taco state) to change the core tastiness of the tacos
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Nov 13, 2014 03:39
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Rodatose posted:How does trade "create" value? 'Value' here is refereing to utility, some people like tacos more, therefore the total utility is maximized by giving the tacos to people who want them the most
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Nov 13, 2014 03:42
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JeffersonClay posted:No, appeal to authority is not a logical fallacy. You're thinking of appeal to false authority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority No, appealing to authority is fallacious in logical reasoning. That's right there on the page. It's also fallacious when you use it to dismiss evidence, which is basically how it functions in these kinds of things- "You know, every economist, apart from a few fringe crackpots, disagrees with you!" quote:Do Marxists believe that people who work harder should be paid more? I was pretty certain that they believed "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". What about people who are naturally stronger or more talented? Do they also deserve more pay? How do you tell the difference between hard work and work enhanced by talent? This isn't about Marxism. I feel that I'd have to literally crucify you, nail your feet together and your hands to a wall, and let you suffer from exposure for a solid week until you're on the verge of death, before you'd finally read what I actually wrote. This is about people continuing to believe in an objective value despite economic orthodoxy insisting that they're idiots, mentally retarded, crazy for doing so. quote:Who thinks this? One of the more pithy slogans derived from mainstream economics is "there's no such thing as a free lunch". Mainstream economists believe that value can be increased through both production (turning raw materials and labor into products and services that people want) and distribution (transferring the products to the people that value them the most). I add value to a pig by hunting, butchering and smoking it, and then combining it with bread, lettuce and tomatoes. I can add additional value to that pig by allowing the person who wants the BLT the most to eat it. People who hate pork and love pigs might think I've reduced the value of the pig by killing it, and reduced the value of the bread lettuce and tomato by tainting them with pork. All of that can coexist without difficulty in a utilitarian framework. Really? So why aren't you arguing against the people saying that value is purely a matter of what people believe? Because in a purely subjective environment, one people have been arguing for for this entire thread, no value is ever added to anything, it is simply something that exists in the mind of the beholder, and therefore you can, in fact must create value out of nothing. Without any way to objectively measure wealth, I can say that US GDP was 17 trillion dollars, or 17 quadrillion dollars, last year, and both statements are equally true so long as I value everything produced in the USA one thousand times as much.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:43
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icantfindaname posted:'Value' here is refereing to utility, some people like tacos more, therefore the total utility is maximized by giving the tacos to people who want them the most Are you ever going to question why economics has failed to communicate basic ideas to the average person? I mean, you keep saying that if you're not a fan of capitalism, you're a genocidal Stalinist...
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Nov 13, 2014 03:44
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icantfindaname posted:'Value' here is refereing to utility, some people like tacos more, therefore the total utility is maximized by giving the tacos to people who want them the most Not value, use value; I know use value = utility. In fact I told you this in an earlier thread when you showed you didn't know the difference between the two Rodatose posted:
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Nov 13, 2014 03:52
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Effectronica posted:No, appealing to authority is fallacious in logical reasoning. That's right there on the page. It's also fallacious when you use it to dismiss evidence, which is basically how it functions in these kinds of things- "You know, every economist, apart from a few fringe crackpots, disagrees with you!" When global warming deniers are dismissed because the overwhelming scientific consensus supports AGW, that's not a logical fallacy. That's not dismissing evidence. That's valuing the opinions of experts, and making a statistical argument to do so. Effectronica posted:This isn't about Marxism. Marxism_is_dead.txt quote:Really? So why aren't you arguing against the people saying that value is purely a matter of what people believe? Because in a purely subjective environment, one people have been arguing for for this entire thread, no value is ever added to anything, it is simply something that exists in the mind of the beholder, and therefore you can, in fact must create value out of nothing. Without any way to objectively measure wealth, I can say that US GDP was 17 trillion dollars, or 17 quadrillion dollars, last year, and both statements are equally true so long as I value everything produced in the USA one thousand times as much. In all the examples I provided, value is purely a matter of what people believe. A price is a relative, local consensus on that value. "Hours of work required to create this product" might be a factor in determining that value, both explicitly and implicitly, but there are many others. I'm not sure if your critique now encompasses algebra or what.
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Nov 13, 2014 05:42
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Rodatose posted:use value and intrinsic value weren't invented by marx; aristotle, adam smith and david ricardo used them for instance. that's kinda a big thing to mess up on your part quote:Maximizing utility isn't the same as creating it. It's simply getting the most out of produced things' inherent material qualities; a trick of optimization through social interaction and organization. You don't "grow the pie," you just make sure parts of the pie don't go to waste. Rodatose posted:How does trade "create" value? Tastiness is not something that exists outside the human mind. If you give the tacos to a person who really likes tacos or is really hungry instead of somebody who hates tacos then the tacos literally taste better, in physical reality, because the taste sensor and experiencer that is eating those particular tacos thinks they taste better. We could prove this scientifically with brain scans. Human labor responsible for ensuring the tacos went to someone who found the most value in eating the tacos can be reasonably said to have added value to the tacos. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 05:57
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coma posted:Marxism definitely isn't dead considering it's still a huge ideology in Latin America and one of the only factions actually capable of standing up to ISIS in Syria is a Marxist faction. Which one? Assad's "Socialist" regime or the PKK which has became a nationalist movement just like every other Communist party eventually did?
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Nov 13, 2014 06:07
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Rodatose posted:How does trade "create" value? Person 1: has 5 pieces of clothing, 0 food Person 2: has 0 clothing, 5 pieces of food No trade: person 1 starve to death, person 2 freeze to death. Trade/government re-distribution/whatever the gently caress you want to call the exchange: Both persons lives through winter. Welp how does trade create value? Typo fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 06:09
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icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 06:40
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Friendly Tumour posted:And yet in the middle of all this very interesting economic theory (no joke) and moral denunciations of the capitalistic classes, I've yet to see how precisely Marxism is going to to be relevant in the 21st century. If you agree with the Hegelian/Marxian philosophy of history in which historical progress is driven by the sublation of contradictions, Marxism remains relevant because the contradictions of the world that capital built continue to persist. If you agree with the Neo-Kantian/liberal view that political wisdom consists of accepting the antinomic character of modern society, not forcing any one vision of the good on to it, and figuring out clever ways of working around the problem, Marxism remains just as much of a vicious aberration as it always has been. If you somehow can argue away the notion of progress altogether and believe in a cyclical view of history Marxism is a foolish fantasy based upon a very narrow historical perspective that is destined to disappear along with the prosperous age we live in today. Liberals are never going to have satisfactory answers to Marxist criticisms because Marxism views at least one of the core tenants of their philosophy to be a philosophical error and obstacle to progress. In other words, liberals are committed to maintaining the material conditions for Marxist critique to have some purchase. It seem reasonable to say that things couldn't possibly have gone any worse for Marxists in the 20th century, so the fact that Marxism remains the ideology of a vocal and critical minority suggests that there is quite simply nothing liberals could do to truly kill Marxism other than to renounce their fundamental beliefs and join the Marxist cause. This is entailed in the stubborn nature of the dialectical form of historical thought. So if we don't like the argument that Marxism is a "specter" these days, we could at least say it remains on liberal-provided life support. As for whether or not it will ever again become a truly going concern, I have no idea. History is highly unpredictable. These philosophical positions don't have eternal metaphysical bases for support, their rise and fall is determined by events.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:55
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Hey Aeolius. I don't want to retread Boner Slam's post so I'll focus on stuff he didn't mention - 1) since you raise the point, I'm sure you're aware that full cost pricing is consistent with a realist and marginalist perspective, e.g., by simply asserting that firms are mistaken on why they do what they do (i.e., that they use simpler heuristics instead of fully optimal intertemporal behaviour - this is a common explanation for consumer behaviour - and instead adjust heuristics from time to time, as arranged by a mysterious entity that one might call the Calvo fairy). However, full cost pricing is treated the same way as (S, s) inventory policies (although post-Keynesians place less emphasis on S,s since Alan Blinder is too recent and too mainstream - no heroic 1950s struggles there): it is theoretically and empirically important, but primarily as yet another black box within the pile of black boxes that is collectively labelled "real rigidities" (which is not to say that the mainstream is uninterested in the contents of the black box, but rather than three-equation modeling will take their existence of published models of the contents as a green light for invoking a stylized fact of their results). Ultimately it is empirically undeniable that firms both pursue full cost pricing and also that firms do adjust their markups from time to time, in a way that correlates to the business cycle - so that former alone is not sufficient. Compare incomplete exchange-rate pass through, which is also empirically undeniable, rather uncomfortable from a simplistic marginalist perspective (and must be given the black-box treatment above), but utterly contradicts post-Keynesian stylization of full cost pricing. 2) a notorious problem is that a lot of IO modelling is really difficult to aggregate. The math just doesn't play well (see also: matching models). This is really an area of active orthodox research, albeit one that is not seen as fatal for business-cycle NK macro because of the real rigidities black box. 3) Well - the theoretical problem with historical time is special pleading. The empirical problem with historical time is overfitting. One problem is fine; having both problems is fatal. There has also been hesitation to embrace tools when they become available - e.g., post-Keynesians talked up a big game about hysteresis and multiple equilibria in the 1980s (when the nascent New Keynesians were arguing about sunspots), but now that Markov switching econometrics has existed for about two decades, it is well past time to stop talking and start running regressions (compare neo-Austrians and their treatment of their precious Hayekian information once game theory got around to it and failed to produce reliably anti-intervention results). So the talk just looks like an excuse to bash results one doesn't like, rather than any epistemological conviction founded on high principle. Non-equilibrium arguments have a subtly different problem of proving too much - having flung equilibrium out of the window in the name of sensitivity to modelling, they have difficulty justifying their own particular approach to the problem. Agent-based modelling is a particularly egregious violator. 4?) Bewley's famous survey of why firms don't lower wages continues to resonate in mainstream macro, and conversely Lavoie has remained content to write of (e.g.) "a" marginal propensity to save, so I'm not sure what you are basing a rigid realism vs positivism distinction on. I find that a lot of post-Keynesian non-journal writing tends to engage in quite a bit of political shadow-boxing, usually involving l'économiste Américain M. Friedman - I think it's important to read past post-Keynesian criticisms of other people's methodologies and consider what they actually advance in their own research programme. 5?) On interpretational disputes - when asdf32 challenges anyone to define exploitation and its relation to profit, in neoclassical terms or otherwise, for an analytical Marxist this really shouldn't be a difficult question. I offered Robinson's. I feel that there appears to be little interest to commit to particular definitions and more to confabulate a narrative that can be used to fight political battles. That might be a feature rather than a bug for someone committed to the anti-analytical perspective, of course. And on 'analytical', I was referring to the analytical vs continental distinction in philosophy - there is even an analytical Marxism. It has nothing to do with equilibrium reasoning, really. ronya fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 07:12
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Vermain posted:This does not answer the central thesis proposed. Yes, energy use might keep increasing, but there is no real reason to believe that this will be at a constant or increasing rate, yes, this is going to consume more energy than there is in the universe like 10 zillion years from now on it just doesn't mean all that much. quote:If energy usage (per capita) grows at a slower exponential rate than economic activity, then it will vanish as a fraction of it. This is an absurdity: the production and use of energy can't vanish as a fraction of the economy.  This is because the world is increasingly going to be expanding in the service sector and the service sector takes up very little energy compare to industrial production. As it turns out once you reach a certain level of material well-being people don't want energy intensive goods anymore, they'd rather have services. quote:I would not exactly count a lot of Western Europe as having "bounced back," given how devastating the 2008 crisis has been for numerous countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece). What statistics are you using for "bounced back", and how long did this return last for? Kliman's research speaks of the trend line of profitability, which, as he demonstrates with United States data, has been on the decline since the post-WWII period. (I don't have the book on hand, but I believe the data goes from around 1940-2009). But yeah, American companies losing profitability since WW2 based on some extrapolation....that doesn't sound too unreasonable actually but it's not a startling insight or anything. The reason for this is because western Europe rebuilt and their corporations started to out-compete American ones, and after the 1970s Japan and the rest of Asia also moved in. 1945 was a pretty unique moment for American economic hegemony that hasn't being matched since. Does he do similar analysis with say German or Chinese firms? quote:Could you please explain what you mean by this statement? quote:What exactly do you mean by this, as well? Prices fall repeatedly and often for goods in which more efficient methods of production are found. Ball-point pens used to be well out of reach of the average person, and you can now buy packages of them for less than a day's wages. Are you denying that this takes place, or that it has an overall effect on profitability? The thesis you have is with prices dropping and corporate profits declining to the point where they cannot be taxed to fund a Social Security system. The issue with this is twin-fold, first of all, central banks simply does not allow deflation (the dropping in prices) to occur outside very special cases like zero interest bound conditions. In response to productivity increases, the central bank will print money to prop up prices. This is why we have 2-4% inflation per year. In modern economies productivity increase are not accompanied by dropping prices precisely because deflation is terrible for the economy. So prices -won't- drop because the government won't let it. The second issue is that a sales tax basically solves the issue you are mentioning even if prices does drop. Let's say corporate profits are taxed at 15%, if the price of a pen drops from $10 to $9 and wipes out $1 of profit for corporation and $0.15 tax revenue, then it's pretty reasonable to make the consumer pay $9.15 for the pen to fund Social Security. Even then it's still a everyone win scenario. Typo fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 08:02
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No wait! Please, launch further into looking like a righteous idiot! "BLARGH MARXISM IS DEAD! It's so dead watch me write 3498349843 words on how dead this dead.txt really is and trip over basic definitions spoon fed to me and demonstrate a lack of working knowledge on anything relevant to the subject and I'M SO MAD! MARX MAKE ME MAD! Everyone gets paid what they deserve and all E C O No M I S T S that are dope and cool agree on this very basic point you dumb ANGRY MARXIST!"
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Nov 13, 2014 08:49
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TheIneff posted:*angry tirade with liberal use of capslock and gradeschool insults* You're right, I'm the unreasonable idiot writing angry screeds You don't even know what my post said, it could very well have been reasonable and well thought out like all my other posts ITT
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Nov 13, 2014 08:57
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Yes guy who posted on every page of the Marxism thread assuring every one that it's totally like really really super dead, I will take your evaluation seriously that it is actually Me who is The Real Angry One.
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Nov 13, 2014 09:10
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TheIneff posted:Yes guy who posted on every page of the Marxism thread assuring every one that it's totally like really really super dead, I will take your evaluation seriously that it is actually Me who is The Real Angry One. Your only point is that you personally dislike a poster, and you aren't making jokes so yes. Yes you are the angry one.
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Nov 13, 2014 09:19
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icantfindaname posted:So that seems pretty much equivalent to #3, "it accelerated class struggle", unfortunately, as mentioned, that's unfalsifiable Actually it was about the struggle to find productive areas to reinvest money potentially creating a break in the C-M-C cycle. Also I specifically asked you what about free trade you wanted to know the Marxist opinion on so I could provide you with it, but rather than give an answer you just declare that because the example I gave had something to do with how free trade effects labour it and all Marxism is obviously limited to talking about class struggle and a couple of other topics. Even then your arguement doesn't really follow. Your position you were trying to defend is that Marxism can only deal with 3 particular topics. Even if the passage did focus on one of those three topics, class struggle (which it really doesn't), that wouldn't preclude it from also talking about other topics like the effective reinvestment of Capital in a globalised economy which I clearly referenced. asdf32 posted:Note the word "traditional" inserted in front of "exploitation" to differentiate "traditional exploitation" from "marx's exploitation". I.E. the two definitions for that word in play here (oh and don't forget my third definition too! - hats). I did note it. In fact I bolded it to draw your attention to it so you could see how stupid such an arguement was. The context of you originally posting it was to defend your point at the bottom of this post where you say that Gantolandon's mostly accurate Marxist definition of exploitation cannot possibly be accurate. You were saying the Marxist definition cannot be right because it is not identical to the layman definition, which is a moronic arguement because words can have more than one definition and semantic arguements are pretty much always inherently dumb anyway. It has nothing to do with a criticism of the actual underlying theory, which is what you said you would be providing by reposting it, but rather just a continuation of the same meaningless arguement you've been providing post after post. quote:Anyway, maybe you should just go ahead and start by outlining how you think marxist exploitation is useful in the real world? Not really. Exploitation is the process by which profit is generated by Capitalists, excluding sole traders and other fairly obvious exceptions. It describes the process of a Capitalist using their control of the means of production to take the surplus value that is generated by the labour of employees. This creates profit, which is kind of an important thing for running a business. This process is fundamental to the creation of profit in most business set-ups, perhaps the most fundamental thing, and so it describes a process which effects us all as we're all effected by how business and industry develop and run. To put it simply, if a capitalist owns a factory with 100 employees and each employee creates goods worth £5,000 in a month each employee isn't going to get £5,000 in wages. Some of what money is going to cover costs like rent, maintaining equipment, etc and some of it is going to be kept by the capitalist, partially for his personal use and partially to reinvest back into and expand the business. The employees might get, say £2,000 per month. That is what is being referred to by exploitation in the Marxist sense. Some people would also view it as exploitation in the layman sense, but whether they do or don't isn't really relevant because it isn't that definition that is being used. Or even more simply: You know how someone with a lot of money can make more money by investing it even if they don't do any work themselves? That, except it applies even if the person does work because the same process is occurring. quote:Trade is profitable and businesses seek profit? Aside from the book it came out of, what's the specifically marxist insight here. It is about the problems faced in finding suitable areas of reinvestment to continue to accumulate capital as part of the C-M-C cycle, specifically in relation to the general theories of capital accumulation that Marx wrote about in chapters 23, 24 and 25 of his break-out hit book about Capital, Capital Vol 1.
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Nov 13, 2014 10:49
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Rodatose posted:How does trade "create" value? Btw this argument can also be "classical" in that it is applicable to a non-preference, output based view of economics and as such even fits into a Marxian angle ofd an "absolute value of things" quote:Maximizing utility isn't the same as creating it. It's simply getting the most out of produced things' inherent material qualities; a trick of optimization through social interaction and organization. You don't "grow the pie," you just make sure parts of the pie don't go to waste. I feel like a lot of you are a bit confused about what utility is supposed to mean... Most of you want to talk about either a cardinal utility value, or the value dichtonomies of Kapital, not about ordinal utility of standard consumer theory. And even then, your two positions are based on different things. One side sees utility created by labour and tradeable, potential value, the other sees utility created during consumption. You'll never agree on anything... Like, for preference based approaches, nobody actually creates utility. Labour does not create utility. The utility of produced elements that sit in a warehouse forever is zero. The utility of those goods given to two people is indeterminate. Utility is just a number assigned to what happens if someone enjoys a sandwhich as opposed to something else, because we like numbers and have shown in which cases we can use numbers instead of concepts like sandwhiches as opposed to something else. Saying: "My work creates the utility of 1000, therefore..." is meaningless. You have spent time to create a taco. If someone throws the taco on the ground, no one will gain utility from it. Utility is not inherit to a thing, it's not a property of an object as it is in Kapital, simply because the numbers are not comparable between individuals or even different formulations of representations for a single individual, and they do not represent a cardinal scaling. If you want to assign a value to your creation based on labour hours spent, or average potential use or whatever classical concept you want, you are free to do so. But it does not mesh with utility in the mainstream sense. I mean labour is a factor input you own, but seeing a direct connection to some utility value pressuposes the entire reality in between (the economic and social system), so that this is very naive.
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Nov 13, 2014 11:06
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JeffersonClay posted:Tastiness is not something that exists outside the human mind. If you give the tacos to a person who really likes tacos or is really hungry instead of somebody who hates tacos then the tacos literally taste better, in physical reality, because the taste sensor and experiencer that is eating those particular tacos thinks they taste better. We could prove this scientifically with brain scans. Human labor responsible for ensuring the tacos went to someone who found the most value in eating the tacos can be reasonably said to have added value to the tacos. Marxism would say types of value are created or effected by trade, but not straight up value. Marxism has 4 different concepts of value. - Value by itself denotes the labour embodied in a commodity. This would be the time taken to get the separate ingredients and put them together to make a taco. This is not effected by giving it to someone else, although some Marxists might argue that we should count the two seconds it would take to give the Taco to a friend. - Surplus value is basically the profit made by the owner of the taco factory from paying his employees less than the value of the goods they have created. This is not effected by giving it to someone else. - Exchange value is the applicable trade for an item. Maybe your friend will trade you a burger for your taco. So 1 taco = 1 burger. However he could also be willing to trade 2 cans of coke so 1 burger = 2 cans of coke. These exchange value can only be realised by trading, although not simultaneously as you couldn't swap a single taco for two cans of coke and a burger, so it is relevant to trade. It is slightly separate from but related to price. - Use-value refers to the utility of the product. Water to a thirsty man had high utility, as does a taco to a hungry man who likes tacos. This is again relevant to the trade and this is what you are trying to point out. There could be a huge rise in the use-value of a taco by giving it to someone who is hungry and loves tacos if you are full and hate tacos anyway. So yes, actually, Marxism sees and acknowledges that there are a lot of processes and types of value happening when trade happens it just happens that what Marxists define as straight up vanilla "value" is separate from what you are talking about when you say "value", which in Marxist terms would be "use-value" because you're talking about the utility someone gets from the taco rather than the amount of labour embodied in creating it. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 11:07
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team overhead smash posted:
Quick question: How do you know that each employee creates goods worth 5000 bucks?
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Nov 13, 2014 11:12
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Boner Slam posted:Quick question: How do you know that each employee creates goods worth 5000 bucks? Sorry, how do you mean? This was just an example where I chose simple figures to show a point. In real life each employee is likely to have different rates of productivity and create different amounts of goods from the other.
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Nov 13, 2014 11:23
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team overhead smash posted:Sorry, how do you mean? This was just an example where I chose simple figures to show a point. In real life each employee is likely to have different rates of productivity and create different amounts of goods from the other. No I mean you say that there are profits, there's labour and such. But how do you know what amount of revenue is attributed to the workings of an employee? I don't understand how this process works.
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Nov 13, 2014 11:30
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Boner Slam posted:No I mean you say that there are profits, there's labour and such. But how do you know what amount of revenue is attributed to the workings of an employee? I don't understand how this process works. Why would you try to measure just how much each worker contributed to the product? Every worker gets their equal share of the final profits. From each according to his ability etc.
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Nov 13, 2014 11:57
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Boner Slam posted:No I mean you say that there are profits, there's labour and such. But how do you know what amount of revenue is attributed to the workings of an employee? I don't understand how this process works. Well firstly, you don't need to know this. There isn't anything in Marxism that says you have to calculate what value everyone contributes. The creation of surplus value still happens regardless in the same way that even if a Managing Director doesn't bother working out his income minus his expenditure to find out what this profit/loss is, he has still made a profit/loss. It is about the process as a whole. If you do want to work it out (and many businesses are be able to) you basically need to be able to measure how much each member of staff produces and how much each commodity made is sold for. This is easiest to imagine in a piecework set-up where employees are paid based on the number of items they produce. They obviously keep track of each emplyoee's individual production and then knowing that they're being paid £100,000 to fulfil an order of 10,000 pairs of jeans they can work out each pair of jeans produced by the labour of the employee is worth £10. So if someone made 20 pairs of jeans, they produced goods worth £200 in revenue. Of each £10 made from jeans a quarter of it might go to the employee, so that employee who produced £200 of jeans would get £50 in wages. Half of the revenue for each £10 pair of jeans, so £50,000, might be used to cover operating expenses such as materials or what have you. That leaves a remaining quarter, £25,000, for the employer to take as profit. That £25,000 is the surplus value. Obviously things get a lot more complicated when you start looking at complicated supply chains and trying to assess the labour involved in each component of a product. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 12:00
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team overhead smash posted:Well firstly, you don't need to know this. There isn't anything in Marxism that says you have to calculate what value everyone contributes. The creation of surplus value still happens regardless in the same way that even if a Managing Director doesn't bother working out his income minus his expenditure to find out what this profit/loss is, he has still made a profit/loss. It is about the process as a whole. Granted, piece meal rates as a way to pay workers obviously had its own issues in the long run. I would like to see an analysis of how useful Stalin-era piece meal rates were to workers in actuality. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 12:56
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Ardennes posted:Granted, piece meal rates as a way to pay workers obviously had its own issues in the long run. I would like to see an analysis of how useful Stalin-era piece meal rates were to workers in actuality. Can't help you there. It's not something I've ever looked into and I'm not actually a fan of piecework rates so it's not something I'd advocate for anyway. It's not a manner I'd wish to work in personally (I'm posting now when I should be working, take that Capitalist overlord!) and I believe historically the workforce weren't fans of it regardless of any potential efficiency gains. The only reason I mentioned them is I thought it would be easy to use as an example of how surplus value and the revenue generated by the labour of each employee could be calculated.
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Nov 13, 2014 13:29
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Is there any real non-marxist evidence that marxism is scientific? A marxist saying marxism is scientific is about as good an argument as the Christian saying the Bible is the supreme word of truth... Also, if an argument is consistent, does that mean its more valuable/valid compared with an inconsistent argument? In that case, Nietzsche is worthless, and Hegel too, since the latter was quite inconsistent regarding syllogism in his Phenomenology. Or if the source is (more or less) consistent, but interpretations vary wildly, does this affect the source in a negative way? I'd say consistency doesn't beget a clear argument, as evidenced by the million-and-one interpretations of Marx' writings. Edit: sort-of hegelian stupidity spotted!! quote:Tastiness is not something that exists outside the human mind. If you give the tacos to a person who really likes tacos or is really hungry instead of somebody who hates tacos then the tacos literally taste better, in physical reality, because the taste sensor and experiencer that is eating those particular tacos thinks they taste better. You're confusing two things here chump. You're forgetting a substance contains chemicals that activate taste buds. The chemicals are already there: if there's no human to taste a taco, then that taco will still contain the chemicals that may (or may not) activate taste buds. The rest of your "argument" is entirely dependent on circumstances, personal preferences and the like. HighClassSwankyTime fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 13:48
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Back To 99 posted:Why would you try to measure just how much each worker contributed to the product? Every worker gets their equal share of the final profits. From each according to his ability etc. Well because he said that each worker is contributing X amount of money to revenue and profits. Since money prices are system inherit, I was just asking how he wants to evaluate this specifically (implied here is of course that specifing a contribution already implies a prior assumption of what value is...). team overhead smash posted:Well firstly, you don't need to know this. There isn't anything in Marxism that says you have to calculate what value everyone contributes. The creation of surplus value still happens regardless in the same way that even if a Managing Director doesn't bother working out his income minus his expenditure to find out what this profit/loss is, he has still made a profit/loss. It is about the process as a whole. Alright, so the formula is: Revenue-OperationalExpenses=Wages+CapitalCosts+Profit, based on some discretionary costing system employed by the controlling/accounting department? But none of this is exogenous, since its all measured in market prices. Where are you getting the absolute value of a persons labour from? Like say, the goods produced are suddenly no longer marketable. Then the wages automatically should be zero? If costs change, the value of an hour work changes with it? That is, are you saying that by definition/paradigm the contribution by a worker is piece revenue-total costs supposing profit is zero and prices/wages are constant? Furthermore, usually a commodity is not produced by a single person. And if it is, what is the contribution of management, maintenance, cantine staff and process controlling personell to this? What about capital costs, interests and so forth? How do investments play into the value of labour then? How are research and development costs calculated, both in R&D labour but also in total investment costs of a company which reduce profits? What about the uncertainty of all associated outcomes? Should there be a risk component? Does labour value change per state and per company? What about the preferences of the people actually paying the revenue? Labour value is henceforth also depedent on the makeup of preferences, the markets the company can reach and the marketing of random company Y? I mean the only way this works is if you just define contribution in terms of labour hours (or if you want societal neccesary labour hours), but then you can't really speak about a worker contributing 5000$ since these are distinct concepts.
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Nov 13, 2014 14:22
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team overhead smash posted:I did note it. In fact I bolded it to draw your attention to it so you could see how stupid such an arguement was. The four words in that post you're referring to, "The bold are assumptions" could hardly be more clear. The marxist definition of exploitation like the Webster dictionary definition or my deliberately absurd hat definition are assumptions. Gantolandon's description was an accurate description of Marx's theory, not a defence of it. If you want people to adopt your definition it takes more than just repeating it. You continue to make that exact mistake - the mistake Gantolandon was making which prompted that post. quote:Not really. Exploitation is the process by which profit is generated by Capitalists, excluding sole traders and other fairly obvious exceptions. I asked why we should care. We see the arithmetic - owners often earn profit. So what? What does highlighting this process and applying the label 'exploitation' tell us and help accomplish? Is a worker necesarily worse off because they're exploited? What's the point? Look I could go through nearly identical math to show why there is always a consumer surplus in the market. Consumers pay less for goods than they receive in value (use value to Marx). If I labeled this "exploitation" and concluded that buyers were exploiting capitalists by not paying them fully for their service (like when I bought a new toilet this week) what would your response be? Might you want to know why I thought it warranted a label, why I thought that definition was useful? Part of the point here still bears repeating unfortunately - definitions are assumptions. You can have your definition of exploitation, you can call it whatever you want. What you need to do is convince me why I should adopt your assumption myself. What you can't do is defend that assumption simply by repeating it. That's all you've done here - again.
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Nov 13, 2014 15:41
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Boner Slam posted:Alright, so the formula is: Revenue-OperationalExpenses=Wages+CapitalCosts+Profit, based on some discretionary costing system employed by the controlling/accounting department? What do you mean by absolute value? In the example I gave which you were talking about I was giving an example of surplus value. The only type of value that I would call an absolute value is value itself, which is the socially necessary labour time used to create the commodity and is very much a separate value form. Surplus Value is not some fixed absolute figure but is rather flexible. I think you are mixing the two types of value up, certainly something that looking back you are doing in your previous post here. To slightly edit what I posted before without taco related references, which was the example given, the four types of value are: - Value by itself denotes the labour embodied in a commodity. If the jeans are made from 3 commodities (metal buttons, metal zip, denim cloth) each of which take an hour to make and the factory buys these commodities and has a worker spend a further hour making jeans out of them, 4 hours of labour are embodied in the pair of jeans. This is defined when an item is made and production is finished. - Exchange value is the applicable trade for an item. This actually refer to trade for different commodities (1 pair of jeans = 1 jumper = 20 yards of linen = 37 apples). It is slightly separate from but related to price, which I could list separately but won't bother. This is what people will pay and although there is often a relation to the value of an item and its exchange value (labour intensive items tend to cost more than non-labour intensive items) this is just a general correlation rather than an absolute law as items like diamonds or works of art provide great examples of this not being the case. The price/exchange value is in flux and can only be known once an item is exchanged/sold. - Use-value refers to the utility of the product. Water to a thirsty man is worth more than it is to a well watered man in terms of utility. This has an important role in deciding exchange value/price. If suddenly the utility of jeans falls, perhaps by going out of style, then this will impact the price. Use-value is constantly in flux as peoples needs and wants change. - Surplus value is basically the profit made by the owner of the value factory from paying his employees less than the value of the goods they have created. If suddenly there is no market for jeans, like you suggest, then it doesn't mean the workers wages go down to 0 but rather it means the business is making a loss (and thus no surplus value). They're obviously going to try and change this as soon as possible and get back to a position where a surplus value is created. This can only be known once an item has been sold. This lack of distinction is where you fall down in the post I linked to where you try and answer Rodatose's question "How does trade "create" value?". Your answer is essentially "by providing additional utility", but this relates to use-value rather than value. Value refers to the labour time involved in creating a commodity, not the utility one gets from it. So to cover your first question, if the goods produced are suddenly no longer marketable then there is no surplus value. The business will have made a loss by paying workers for jeans it can't sell, so it isn't creating any surplus value (which can only be created when items are sold for more than cost) and so will be taking a loss. It will obviously want to correct this situation as soon as possible. The others I'll deal with in turn: quote:Furthermore, usually a commodity is not produced by a single person. And if it is, what is the contribution of management, maintenance, cantine staff and process controlling personell to this? They all have a role in producing a commodity but that doesn't relate to an equivalent effect on the differing types of value. Take a manager. He will usually have no direct role in creating a commodity. He will contribute zero value himself. However a good manager should be able to ensure productivity is high, implementing methods of work and attitudes which speed the process. Now if we're looking at the business in isolation and ignoring all other jean making businesses, although the total amount of value created would be the same (say 7 hours of value per employee per day) this would lead to the jeans having less value as there is now less socially necessary labour time used in the construction of each one (say 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes)! Basically, they are quicker to make. Now if the price remains the same, this in turn leads to a higher surplus value as more commodities are made (assuming basic wage rather then piece-work). The maintenance staff would probably be the odd man out as value takes into account the labour of all workers involved in making a commodity and the components a commodity is made from and the value in the means of production. If it took various denim and button and zip factories a total of 5 hours to create the various components which are delivered to the jeans factory and which take a further hour to turn into a pair of jeans, the jeans would embody 6 hours of value. On top of this you would add a depreciated amount of the value of the labour used to construct the means of production. quote:What about capital costs, interests and so forth? How do investments play into the value of labour then? The level of investment or provision of capital does not create value, which is the socially necessary labour embodied in a commodity. In a capitalist system these investment are what enables capitalists to own the means of production and create a surplus value. Workers would not willingly choose to have a capitalist make money of their work if their was an alternative that was in all other regards identical, but because the capitalist is the one that owns the factory or office or what have you and they need money to subsist they have little choice but to work where their labour is then exploited to create surplus value. quote:How are research and development costs calculated, both in R&D labour but also in total investment costs of a company which reduce profits? The inventor of a particular machine used in production wouldn't be considered to contribute value to every version of that machine ever made, but his invention of it enables others to use their labour to create those machines (hence giving them value) and (assuming it is effective) would allow greater productivity and greater surplus value (putting aside supply and demand, etc, for the time being) quote:What about the uncertainty of all associated outcomes? Should there be a risk component? Does labour value change per state and per company? Strictly speaking because we don't much care about the individual value of one worker and value is based on the average skill of the average worker, so the reason I specified "if we're looking at the business in isolation" when I spoke about the effect of a good manager above is that it has a much different effect if we look at jean makers as a whole. A manager improving productivity at one factory would have a negligible effect on the overall skill and productivity of jean makers as a whole, so the value in a pair of jeans would be pretty much the same. So in this larger view look at the scenario the value of jeans from this factory stay the same (rather than decreasing) and the total value they are producing increases (as they are making more jeans). Either way the overall outcome of a larger surplus value remains the same. quote:What about the preferences of the people actually paying the revenue? Do you mean the preference of the customer? This would be their use-value. quote:Labour value is henceforth also depedent on the makeup of preferences, the markets the company can reach and the marketing of random company Y? No, value is dependent on the socially necessary labour time embodied in the commodity. Maybe if the use-value of it suddenly drops (jeans go out of fashion) then the price will fall and no surplus value will be created because it is sold at cost or a loss, but the value (the labour time embodied in the commodity) would not be effected.
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Nov 13, 2014 15:49
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:You're confusing two things here chump. You're forgetting a substance contains chemicals that activate taste buds. The chemicals are already there: if there's no human to taste a taco, then that taco will still contain the chemicals that may (or may not) activate taste buds. The rest of your "argument" is entirely dependent on circumstances, personal preferences and the like. Whether or not the chemicals activate taste buds associated with pleasure is an empirical question answered each time someone eats a taco. There's no objectively good taco because tastiness can only be determined by running the object through a taste detector attached to a human brain. You might be able to deduce some general outlines of tastiness from chemical analysis (this taco is too spicy for 95% of people) , but that's just an estimate that will be either confirmed or rejected empirically when the taco gets eaten. Tastiness, like utility in general, is an emergent property created in a human brain.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:02
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asdf32 posted:The four words in that post you're referring to, "The bold are assumptions" could hardly be more clear. The marxist definition of exploitation like the Webster dictionary definition or my deliberately absurd hat definition are assumptions. Gantolandon's description was an accurate description of Marx's theory, not a defence of it. Whether definitions are applicable is an assumption and something you have to defend. For instance if I were to call you an idiot, you massive idiot, it would be remiss of me if I didn't point out how you constantly fail to understand basic points and terminology and just make pointless semantic arguements. I wouldn't however try and start a stupid multiple post-arguement about what exactly "idiot" means. You don't have to defend basic definitions of words, especially when it's a piece of terminology being used in exactly the context if was meant to be used it. What Gantolandon was doing was simply providing you with the definition because you don't understand basic terminology. He specifically said he was talking about the meaning and definition of the word and when you argued against it with me your argument was that the marxist definition wasn't the same as the layman definition so therefore it couldn't be true. I don't really care if you adopt it or not, but your insistence that people can't use more than one definition of a word because words can only have one meaning is absurd. quote:I asked why we should care. We see the arithmetic - owners often earn profit. So what? What does highlighting this process and applying the label 'exploitation' tell us and help accomplish? Is a worker necesarily worse off because they're exploited? What's the point? No-one would care if you attach labels to something because you are just some random guy. Now on the other hand if someone had coined the term and it had been popularised so it was a well understood piece of terminology, although I might I certainly disagree with the actual arguement the term represents I wouldn't do what you've done and just mindlessly complain that the word also has a more well known layman meaning and insist the two meanings have to be interchangeable.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:09
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asdf32 posted:The four words in that post you're referring to, "The bold are assumptions" could hardly be more clear. The marxist definition of exploitation like the Webster dictionary definition or my deliberately absurd hat definition are assumptions. Gantolandon's description was an accurate description of Marx's theory, not a defence of it. Use-value is expressed qualitatively. People are probably still repeating these definitions because - after several years of this - you have failed to grasp the basic concepts outlined in the first few pages of the book. Definitions are usually expressed through necessary and sufficient conditions, and usually people can understand that the vernacular use of a term does not necessarily determine how it is defined within a theoretical vocabulary, let alone in every circumstance.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:11
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