Are you saying this is an unfair request? While someone can be an atheist without any justification at all, it is definitely good for atheists who care about justifying their position to know and understand theological arguments. In decades of talking about atheism, I’ve found that the average atheist is better versed in the Bible than the average theist. so this is a reasonable request.
The question put to you was: would you please stop making rude and insulting posts? I do not think that you have answered that question directly. Indirectly, your posts continue to have content that is rude, insulting, condescending and arrogant. I would agree, based on the content of your posts, with your earlier posts that you are not an expert on economics. Neither am I. In my opinion, the offensive portion of your posts outweighs the educational value, which is small, as you yourself acknowledge. The material you post about people not reading what you have written is replete with insulting flibberty gibbet.
ENOUGH!
Everyone back away from the personal remarks. They do nothing to promote the discussion.
Stick to arguing your specific points on facts and logic and leave the observations about whether another poster has or has not been too rude (or sufficiently rude) out of the discussion.
[ /Moderating ]
Thank you.
Well, now that the fun has stopped, let me make a very dull post about prices.
The labor theory of value fails for very basic reasons, but the major issue is that labor is only one component of a good or service and quite frequently a marginally important one. Not an irrelevant one, but it’s extremely important to see the many goods and services where labor is a minimal aspect, or where is performed ahead of time. If you try to make it so, then you get caught up in discussions about, well, what is “really” labor, or what’s “necessary labor” versus other (evidently unnecessary) labor. Which tends, on the whole, to lead to a very personal and heartfelt but also fantastically useless value judgment about what’s worthwhile.
Hence why Marx was not really an economist, and why his works have no real utility for economics. They were obsolete even before he wrote them, and what he did write that was of use was already stated better by others. Value is a question of morals and metaphysics; economics is a study of a living ecosystem composed of humans. Economists try to understand the rules and relationships that exist, although they do often try to find ways to understand them better, or to see if the application of some rule fails in reality or if it would make certain things better according to an external value set.
And again, to say that capitalism has failings is irrelevant. Thus far we have not observed any semi-stable system which does better. Societies which encouraged formations of capital and efficient manufacturer and distribution of services and goods became so vastly wealthy as to render the alternatives kinda pointless. Even the most socialist Social Democrat does not break up capital. In fact, it tends to be the opposite. Powerful left-wing states have a strong habit of creating extreme concentrations of capital. They are less successful at getting them to function well.
However, while you are claiming to rail against capital, it strikes me that you are really targeting free markets in general, and even the very concept of trade.
No, it is not. “Abstract” is not a synonym for “metaphysical”, they are two different things. And value in the context of trade is distinctly amoral – there may be a peripheral moral decision related to an exchange, such as whether I want to take more money to sell this thing to a person who will make ill use of it, or whether I want to do business with a person who will make ill use of the profits derived from the exchange, but, in general, there is no moral quantity associated with value and trade.
In fact, markets are not a capitalist creation, they exist within almost any social construct. In any reasonably stable socio-economic system, the marketplace will not be “free”, it has to be managed to some extent by the system. It is not evident that a marketplace can be stable without some set of rules.
Capitalism, as we know it, describes a methodology of finance and ownership, which means a set of rules for the market. Recent history seems to suggest that the most nearly pure form of that basic methodology will ultimately converge to a plutocracy that cannot be expected to be functionally superior to any random autocracy.
Hence, it is very difficult to see much effective difference between the airy theories of Marx and von Mises: the ultimate result appears be the same, at least in the modern world. I suspect this may be in part because the kind of people who take on leadership roles tend to be charismatic short-sighted sociopaths (though short-sightedness may be as much an effect of leadership rather than necessarily a natural trait).
I believe you conflating a statement about the utility (personal value exchange) of trade with the concept of value in the sense of labor value. To define any kind of meaning to the latter except through the use of the former inherently requires some kind of external moral framewokr.
Shockingly, I know… as I posted this very fact several pages back.
There are billions of markets that exist without any clear rules and certainly not a clearly written set of rules. People can and do, trade favors, companionship, even love. These are all markets, even though very hard to measure in a financial sense . If you want a more transactional example, markets can, and have, existed between peoples who couldn’t even communicate with language. Many of the most vibrant and interesting markets are quite unregulated.
…No, it doesn’t. You can have capitalism in a brutally free market or a tightly controlled one, although the more formalistic corporate-type entities do generally require a kind of government recognition, if not necessarily support. Even with that, neither of these sets out any requirement for how the market functions.
Well, no, it doesn’t. Capitalism can, and often does, create plutocrats. But in a free society they have effectively no power. Bill Gates can give away another billion dollars and he still will have less power than a junior Congressman. The Robber Barons weren’t especially loved or respected.
Read your own words again. Do you see why I suggested that value judgments were being put into play rather than a rational analysis? Like Marx, you are attributing a moral dimension to a “group” that is rather diverse, defined by various cultures, ethnic groups, attitudes, religions, and political beliefs. Yet you find it easy to reduce them down to a caricature, and not an especially well-drawn one.
Someone on this board once described Yahoo Answers as “like the Straight Dope on a very high dose of stupid pills”. It is not a reliable source. In this case, however, the thread that you linked to says that you’re wrong, as does your second citation from a sociology journal. You seem to have forgotten what statement you made that’s in question. Let me remind you:
[Quote=The Second Stone]
Ronald Reagan style conservatism dealt with the poor and mentally ill by dumping them on the street and villainizing them and shutting down all funding to assist them.
[/quote]
So you said that Reagan and those who followed his style of conservatism “shut down all funding” to assist both the poor and the mentally ill. It’s easy to show that you’re wrong. First of all, the two cites you’ve posted deal with funding for the mentally ill; you haven’t given us a single word in defense of what you said about funding for poverty. Let’s look at that first.
Throughout the Reagan administration there were dozens of anti-poverty programs, and there still are today. Total spending on welfare went up during his administration. So your claim about “shutting down all funding” to the poor is the opposite of the truth.
Now regarding the sociology article by Alexandar Thomas that you linked, I’m guessing that you didn’t read it before you linked to it. If you do read it, you will see that it doesn’t justify your position. It mentions “cuts” to mental health services but gives no hard data. I’m sure you understand that cutting funding is not the same thing as shutting down all funding. The author makes no attempt to hide his anti-Reagan bias, but nothing he says comes close to justifying what you wrote.
It works in all browsers that I’m aware of. What’s your source for the claim that it doesn’t work in all browsers?
Not at all. Where I quoted you, you had already moved on from LTV and were making a more general statement about value. You ascribe some kind of morality to value, I am failing to see that. At all. The market itself is categorically amoral (not immoral, amoral, completely lacking any moral compass, for good and/or for bad). There is no intrinsic moral value to the trade of goods and services or how much they might be worth.
Which does not relate to the discussion.
Capitalism is about ownership and finance. That is what defines it. By its very nature, it requires structure, which literally cannot be had in a “brutally free market”. It is not about trade, it is about capital.
Either you are living in a completely different universe from the one I am inhabiting, you fail to understand how the system actually works, or you are being deliberately naïve, because where I live, it is functionally completely the opposite.
Not sure what your goofy fixation on morality is all about. Sociopathy seems to be a congenital condition or perhaps one that may be acquired through trauma, but it is a condition, like autism or perfect pitch: there is no moral dimension to it. We ought not have sociopaths running things for practical reasons, similar to not having blind people drive buses or cowards on the front lines of battle.
Right and wrong have no place in the discussion. If something works well but somehow seems to be repellent, I fail to see why it would make sense to choose an inferior alternative just because it seems less squicky. It may appear that the objection to capitalism is moralistic, but when it clearly show a trajectory toward increasing social instability, it either needs to be seriously modified, or it needs to be replaced with something less worrying.
Marx was certainly an economist. He is considered by many to be the last of the classical economists. His theory of value builds directly on the work done by Ricardo. The first volume of Capital was published in 1867. Jevons, Menger and Walras published their papers on marginal analysis during the first half of the 1870s.
Furthermore, set aside the labor theory of value and Marx did some solid work: I’ll repost the link to the comments of the economic historian Brad DeLong. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/04/delong-understanding-marx-lecture-for-april-20-2009.html
Whether Marx is worth studying in depth today is another matter.
[/QUOTE]
I’m a bit late to be back to this, sorry. I’m, probably unsurprisingly, unimpressed by De Long’s “argument,” such as it is. First up, I’m not quite sure what the language’s purpose might be here–“bosses people around”? what might that be supposed to mean?–and I find this whole “nobody thinks that way!” argument rather embarassing. Probably nobody I could ask thinks that humans are rational actors out at all times to maximize their profit through the judicious weighing of alternatives, and yet that’s what some economists would use as the basis for their arguments. Essentially, this argument again boils down to: I’m using the word value differently from the way Marx is using it; it is not a refutation of Marx’s line of analysis. In fact, it’s so superficial (it ignores, as is quite usual, the question of whether trading your labor for the money to buy your use values is the same as the bartering of commodities) that I’m not quite sure what was supposed to be shown through it. It’s a litany of strawmen.
More than just dull, to be sure!
Have you studied Marx’s theory? If so, you might remember that the argument is quite clear (and logically coherent) that it’s merely an illusion that there are goods (or services) for which labor is “marginally important” (and I’m reasonably impressed that you managed to avoid the complication of an example by simply not giving an example). Whatever commodity you can think of: at the bottom of it lies human labor. Provide an example to the contrary, please, if you think that’s false.
And “worthwhile” is an entirely pointless word to use here, as you’d know if you’d followed the debate: we’ve been talking about what the meaning of “socially necessary labor time” is, and it’s really nothing of the sort you’re claiming here.
Wow, good, splendid basis for a discussion! You already know this, based on what evidence?
Of course Marx was “not really an economist” if by that you mean an academic economist molded in the ideas current in MBA programs–a university-trained believer in market orthodoxy. Marx was a philosopher and a student of political economy: he believed in the need to see the whole system, rather than just its “economics.”
It’s probably capitalism’s greatest success to make you think that value is just “morals and metaphysics”–that it is not bound bodily to human labor. Because then, as in RickJay’s uplifting narrative, if I sell my labor for money, because I really can’t do anything else, you needn’t worry that your exploiting my inferior position in society–all our values are increased, aren’t they? If you decide that you “value” a Cezanne painting at $100 million dollars, hey, you’ve suddenly “created” as much “value” as tens of thousands of, say, bus-drivers, or fishermen, or t-shirt factory workers do in a year. It’s all a question of how much you “value” things–and you just don’t value labor. Which is interesting, because as noted, labor (human work) is the sine qua non of everything: from mere reproduction to the creation of iPads, airplanes, and economic well-being in general.
Evidence? Evidence that “right-wing” (?) or “center” (?) states function “better”? What is “good” functioning, to you?
Oh, yes, sure. But in my dislike of the free market, I’m really like most capitalists, who love the idea of the free market, but would much rather have their fledgling industries protected by large tariffs, and then shift to the idea of free trade only when they have reached maturity–ideally as a monopolist, or perhaps a trust. Or like those who’d rather have no regulations on the money market, but don’t take a principled stand when their banks need bailing out of trouble that they’ve put themselves into.
Real estate, mining rights and agistment are some of the obvious ones. While they sometimes can be made *more *valuable through labour, there are many, many examples where people derived profits from these commodities with absolutely no labour being done by anyone.
There are literally thousands of other examples.
I’ve sort of skimmed over most of this thread, mostly out of nostalgia for arguing with friends in high school who had just discovered Marx. It seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that the fundamental point of disagreement in this argument is whether or not a good can have an objective value. To me with my mainstream economics studies, the answer is no; a good, commodity, or whatever only possesses value insofar as an actor in the system gives it value. Food only has value because because people need it to live, gold only has value because people like shiny things, iPods only have value because people like toys.
Enterprise, if I understand correctly, argues based on an axiom that goods have some sort of inherent value, regardless of how much people want or need them. A big pile of food has value even if everyone in the vicinity is already full and doesn’t want any. An iPod has value because it took labor and resources to make it, even if everyone’s already upgraded to a smartphone and has no use for it. That objective value is in part determined by the labor that went into making it, with some fuzziness about whether the labor was socially necessary or valuable. That’s the only way I can make sense of his pork and milk math, as it seems to be arguing that even if a person doesn’t want or can’t use a good, it still possesses its full, objective value somehow.
Is this an accurate interpretation of the disagreement?
Value a relationship. An object is valuable when (1) the object shows the attributes that satiate the needs or desires of the valuing agent and (2) the valuing agent shows the needs or desires that can be satiated by the attributes of the object. Both conditions have to be fulfilled.
I think that is a lot of the disagreement. Enterprise believe that the inherent value comes from the labor that went into the good. That’s the reason for the earlier objection that cutting up a painting subtracts value, because it took labor to cut it up. Therefore, if the value of something is due to the labor that went into it, the painting should be worth more, not less.
Regards,
Shodan
I just don’t understand the relationship between labor and value. If I produce something for half the effort as someone else, is what I produced worth half as much?
The argument Enterprise will now come back with will be to again point you to the concept of socially necessary labor value, which means - I am simplifying here, but it’s close enough - “about the amount of labor is takes to make something, on average, assuming average skills, capital, and other inputs, measured in time.”
So if it usually takes 2 hours of labor to make a widget, then the widget has two hours’ worth of labor in it. If I am stupid and take 4 hours to make it, but the average is 2 hours, my widget still just has 2 hours of labor in it because that’s the average. If I invent a widget machine that makes widgets in 1 hour and every widget producer buys the machine, the SNLV of a widget drops to an hour because that’s now the average. Marxism and the concept of SNLT is rife with problems but Marx wasn’t actually an idiot.
[QUOTE=Enterprise]
Because then, as in RickJay’s uplifting narrative, if I sell my labor for money, because I really can’t do anything else, you needn’t worry that your exploiting my inferior position in society–all our values are increased, aren’t they?
[/QUOTE]
Frankly, this is a ridiculous statement, and I said nothing of the kind, or at least nothing to imply it’s uplifting.
First of all, it’s not just me saying the only thing a person can sell is their labor. It’s you saying it, and if you don’t believe me, here are your own damn words:
This is your claim, your words, indeed the very core of your position. The notion that all a person can sell is their labor is pretty much the inescapable conclusion of the notion that labor is all there is. Which, to be honest, is literally true; all utility comes from effort of some kind. Where we disagree, aside from semantics, is how best to organize our efforts.
But perhaps more pertinently, who says an exchange has to be “uplifting”? Not I. I absolutely agree that some labor is drudgery. Someone whose only choice is to work in a dead end fast food job may not necessary be super happy in that job. I wouldn’t be, though granted I’m not really the target labor market for that kind of job anymore. And I wholeheartedly agree people whose job opportunities are limited can be in a position where the trade is unbalanced to the point that it is simply not good for society to allow it to happen unfettered. And we have those protections, and they work pretty effectively. We have minimum wage laws, labor laws, workplace safety regulations, social welfare programs, progressive tax rates, and on and on.
I do not personally know a sane person who supports the general idea of free markets and capitalism but does not believe we need such protections. We can argue over the details of them, or what the minimum wage should be and such. In another thread there’s a debate going on over the value and fairness of legally mandated paid parental leave (which Canada, my home, has, and IMHO is pretty logically structured and socially beneficial.) It’s a good discussion, one in which intelligent questions and answers are being posted.
Anyone who didn’t end their economics training in first year once they’d put down either Ayn Rand or Karl Marx is aware of the concepts of externalities, welfare economics, and the like. The first quote in Wikipedia on minimum wage is by WINSTON CHURCHILL, of all people, flat out stating that the free market cannot ensure a decent wage because of the imbalance in bargaining position between employee and employee in some jobs.
The existence of such holes in the system represent “flaws,” in a sense, of capitalism. However, what we have in capitalist countries is not unlimited capitalism, and never has been and never will be. Hell, it’s not even close to it. The same intellectual tradition that gave us capitalism is the one that gave us the concept of a socially responsible state.
But are you better off selling your labor than not? Almost all the time in a modern, socially responsible state, of course you are. Look, the people selling you chicken at Popeye’s may not be doing the world’s most glamorous job, but they’re making a wage that helps pay the bills. That may actually be their best option, and incredible though it might sound, some of them may actually like their jobs. There is no lack of dignity in making fried chicken for people and bringing home a modest paycheck. We have a responsibility as a society to make sure Popeye’s isn’t ripping their employees off, exposing them to safety hazards, or discriminating against them based on race or engaging in other behaviours that we can’t tolerate, but there is nothing inherently wrong in asking a person “please come make fried chicken for me and I’ll pay you $11 an hour.” I would furthermore theorize that redistributing the capital that is Popeye’s Inc., or whatever the company’s called, is not going to change the fact that some people are going to have to make the chicken for eleven bucks an hour.
No, it isn’t.
Competitive firms have to maximize profit to stay alive, but for people, the models assume maximization of utility. Even when dollars are used are a proxy for goods, the goal for people isn’t to maximize the profit of expected dollars but to maximize expected utility from those dollars. This sort of dollar-filter will still show declining marginal utility, as each additional dollar is valued a little less than each previous dollar. Agents in the models would prefer the certainty of a lower amount than the gamble of scoring it big, even when the expected profit of the gamble is higher than the certain amount.
And “rational” in this sense is not the dictionary definition of the word, but a mathematical assumption that preferences are both complete and transitive. (In my head, I tend to use the word “zational” to distinguish the mathematical assumption from the dictionary definition.) Arguably the more important of the two is transitivity. If a person strictly preferred A to B, and strictly preferred B to C, and strictly preferred C to A, then they would bankrupt themselves trading eternally in a circle. It makes sense to outlaw that and related cases. The goal is to have some idea of how people will respond to changes around them, and it seems sensible to say people are “rational” in the sense that they can give some ranking to the options in front of them. Our very actions seem to imply some sort of implicit ranking – after all, we can see we chose X instead of Y just by looking at our receipts. A model that simulates that process doesn’t have to ape at realism to be useful.
I’d guess only a very small minority take these assumptions as literally true. One of the previous books I cited states that the assumption of (mathematical) rationality is “clearly false”.
The “basis of economists’ arguments” is that people respond to incentives. Models that unambiguously outline the effects of incentives help us clarify our thoughts. We don’t want to map every storm of neurons inside the human brain. That’s impossible at present. So we just try to get a feel for which way the wind is blowing.
Looking into who caused the Global Financial Crisis and who paid for the bill I would say the socially responsible state has its own “flaws” as well. Leftist commentators (like Naomi Klein, for example) show that, under the siege of global corporatism, states can no longer act socially responsably. Despite the coherent criticism coming from those who acknowledge the practical success and theoretical superiority of capitalism (such as this one), reports such as that of Oxfam show that nowadays high levels of wealth concentration can harm democracy and reduce equal opportunity, as the wealthy begin to have an undue influence on government policy making.