In which Ram27 panicks about losing his job

[topleybird]

In Star Trek they don't even use money any more, they just 3D print whatever they want and it's all like robots and shit doing all the labor

You walk into a Space Arby's and order 100 roast beef sandwiches for a laugh and they have to give them to you

…except when they use latinum for some stuff? I never really got that bit

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by FlamingGlobes

Some more than others. If you work behind a counter, press buttons and do minimal labor, your time is not as valuable as someone who went to school, learned a trade, breaks their body to make a living etc.

not super relevant to the undeniable math that your boss has to short you the Value Added to make a profit

aka stealing from you

[topleybird]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

Gosh didn’t expect a casual admission of WORKPLACE THEFT from the same guy, in the same thread, giving Ram27 a hard time over his relatively minor work-related failures

Look, the toilet paper is provided to all employees. If one of Flobes's coworkers has explosive diarrhea every day and is using just a ton of TP, then Flobes, by using far less than the average, is coming out ahead for his boss. Plus maybe he has a condition where he's afraid to use the toilet anywhere but home…should he be excluded from the provision of free TP? Really makes you think

[FlamingGlobes]

Originally Posted by LaBelle

Oh boy, i'd hope people aim a bit higher when they envision a perfect society.

I guess I should say, a Bare Minimum, Decent Society.

[Elphenor]

what you're describing is impossible really

someone is going to have to flip your burgers and they'll only do it if they're financially insecure

[Elphenor]

I'm simply saying they should at least be spitting in your food until the revolution (you as in Globes)

[ovary]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

it is just labor theory of value, nobody gets paid what they're worth, they can't be

nothing radical

or babies first Marx if you want

that is not what the labor theory of value means

[yo soy el mejor]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

it is just labor theory of value, nobody gets paid what they're worth, they can't be

nothing radical

or babies first Marx if you want

no! marx for beginners.

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by ovary

that is not what the labor theory of value means

it's the conclusion Marx draws from it

[Elphenor]

Raw parts + labor (value added) = total value

but the capitalist can not pay the worker the value added because then he'd no longer be the capitalist

*Closes chapter 1*

[yo soy el mejor]

lol ur too cute

[Disco King]

It's funny to imagine political programmes being stifled by their proponents gatekeeping their underpinning texts.

"Hey Mr. Marx, I've heard about your theories, and I'd really like to help make the communist relolution a reality!"

"Oh yeah? Name six of my songs. And not just from my new stuff. At least three have to be Young Marx deep cuts."

[Elphenor]

I imagine them complaining about people only wanting to hear the hits at the expense of new material

"C'mon guys I wrote The Manifesto a decade ago..."

[Joey Goldberg]

don't cook a steak in a microwave either

has that been covered yet?

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

Raw parts + labor (value added) = total value

but the capitalist can not pay the worker the value added because then he'd no longer be the capitalist

*Closes chapter 1*

The labour theory of value is a relic of classical economics that never really made sense, though.

The value of a good or service isn't the sum of its material inputs and required labour. Working on something for a really long time doesn't increase its value if nobody wants or has any use for that thing.

The value of something is based on how much people want/need that thing, and how much they are willing to give up to get it. As such, the value of something is subjective, and not based in intrinsic properties of the good such as the labour time.

Of course, in order to make a good worth selling, its value, the amount people are willing to pay for it, would have to exceed the cost of it's inputs, or else you wouldn't bother making and selling it. This doesn't mean that the value is a direct reflection of the inputs. It just means that it's only worth the seller's while if its value exceeds a certain baseline of what they had to spend to make it. Value is created because the seller needs the five dollars more than they want the product, and the buyer needs the product more than they want the five dollars.

This same creation of value is applicable to markets not only for goods, but for labour itself. The worker, the person selling their labour, needs the fifteen bucks more than they need that hour of time. The employer needs that hour of labour more than they need the fifteen bucks. "Profits" are created through trades, to some extent, being mutually beneficial.

Now, "mutually beneficial" doesn't necessarily mean "fair" or "moral" or that exploitation isn't happening or that laissez faire free-market economics are good. It just means that a theory of this exploitation can't really rest on the concepts of the labour theory of value and surplus value, which are nonsense. Regardless, it's still true that large corporations exploit workers and that wages should ideally be higher and that some instances of scarcity that necessitate markets are artificial, IMO.

[Elphenor]

I think you miss the point

regardless of the numerical dollar value determined by the marketplace, the component that make up that value are still

materials + value added

[run2pee]

Originally Posted by Disco King

The labour theory of value is a relic of classical economics that never really made sense, though.

The value of a good or service isn't the sum of its material inputs and required labour. Working on something for a really long time doesn't increase its value if nobody wants or has any use for that thing.

The value of something is based on how much people want/need that thing, and how much they are willing to give up to get it. As such, the value of something is subjective, and not based in intrinsic properties of the good such as the labour time.

Of course, in order to make a good worth selling, its value, the amount people are willing to pay for it, would have to exceed the cost of it's inputs, or else you wouldn't bother making and selling it. This doesn't mean that the value is a direct reflection of the inputs. It just means that it's only worth the seller's while if its value exceeds a certain baseline of what they had to spend to make it. Value is created because the seller needs the five dollars more than they want the product, and the buyer needs the product more than they want the five dollars.

This same creation of value is applicable to markets not only for goods, but for labour itself. The worker, the person selling their labour, needs the fifteen bucks more than they need that hour of time. The employer needs that hour of labour more than they need the fifteen bucks. "Profits" are created through trades, to some extent, being mutually beneficial.

Now, "mutually beneficial" doesn't necessarily mean "fair" or "moral" or that exploitation isn't happening or that laissez faire free-market economics are good. It just means that a theory of this exploitation can't really rest on the concepts of the labour theory of value and surplus value, which are nonsense. Regardless, it's still true that large corporations exploit workers and that wages should ideally be higher and that some instances of scarcity that necessitate markets are artificial, IMO.

Woah mama

Looks like we got ourselves a reader

[Elphenor]

for example if you pay someone to paint your house then you resell it

regardless of what you end up selling it for, it's completely certain you won't pay the painters anywhere near the equivalent of the value they added to the house

it wouldn't make sense to do that under capitalism, as it works specifically because of that exploitation

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I imagine them complaining about people only wanting to hear the hits at the expense of new material

"C'mon guys I wrote The Manifesto a decade ago..."

"People who've read by mathematical manuscripts say it's some of the most impressive scholarship I've ever done. Then I went to the IWA meeting and heard Proudhon go like, 'Why is Marx writing about calculus? Why can't he talk about dialectics and phenomenology?' I said OK, and now my manuscripts are sitting in a can at home. The best work I've ever done is still sitting there, unreleased."

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I think you miss the point

regardless of the numerical dollar value determined by the marketplace, the component that make up that value are still

materials + value added

But those values are subjective, not based on some intrinsic property like the number of manhours that went into it.

Polishing a brass ring for six hours doesn't necessarily make it any more valuable than polishing a ring for three hours.

Values come down to how much somebody wants something, not the specifics of its history.

Originally Posted by Elphenor

for example if you pay someone to paint your house then you resell it

regardless of what you end up selling it for, it's completely certain you won't pay the painters anywhere near the equivalent of the value they added to the house

it wouldn't make sense to do that under capitalism, as it works specifically because of that exploitation

You first made the claim that "value is distinct from price," and now you're claiming that making a profit due to selling something at a higher price indicates that you aren't compensating the painter you hired for the value they've added to the house. But if the price something commands on the market is distinct from it's value, how can prices be used to measure how much value one has "stolen?"

[topleybird]

[Elphenor]

if polishing the ring for 6hrs increased its value in the marketplace by 5 cents...then the Value Added is 5 cents

the worker under capitalism will be very lucky to receive 2 cents assuming he does not own the ring

Yes?

he has been robbed 3 cents of the Value Added

[Elphenor]

In the real world you wouldn't be able to determine some exact numerical number for the Value Added

you can simply know, that the worker, can not be receiving it because Capitalism doesn't work otherwise

the surplus used to obtain more property, is taken from the part of the Value Added not given to the worker

[yo soy el mejor]

You sound like a capitalist trying to explain the labor theory and you just sound like a capitalist. It's not all about "value" to the employer.

[pavementtune]

Originally Posted by FlamingGlobes

In a perfect society, the uneducated or the physically unable wouldn't have to worry about their low paying, entry level jobs because there would be a safety net in the form of affordable housing, free healthcare, food stamps etc. to help make up the difference.

There are some countries doing that, it's called socialism, which isn't perfect by a mile, and they get the payback now some 40 years later, by voters going the opposite because "dang it, no freebies for those wheel chair fuckers, bootstraps!"
I wish I was kidding.

[yo soy el mejor]

elph, since you don't like to read, here is a simplified chart for you to start knowing what you are talking about before blabbing as if you do (very upper class white man of you):

[Elphenor]

nah nvm hella not worth it

just alienation was not the issue specifically here

[yo soy el mejor]

nah nvm hella not worth it! must've been something saucy

[Joey Goldberg]

"Alienation" is always an issue

awful, awful song

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

if polishing the ring for 6hrs increased its value in the marketplace by 5 cents...then the Value Added is 5 cents

the worker under capitalism will be very lucky to receive 2 cents assuming he does not own the ring

Yes?

he has been robbed 3 cents of the Value Added

Introducing the ridiculous notion of polishing a ring for six hours was meant to demonstrate how the value of the ring isn't based on the number of man-hours that went into it, because adding more hours clearly doesn't add more value to the ring. If the value of a good isn't really a reflection of the labour necessary to produce the good, then the labour theory of value fails.

If we're not saying that labour itself necessarily increases the value of a product, but instead we are only talking about how labour can increase the value of a product, then that's all well and good, but in that case, we're still ultimately dealing with a subjective/marginalist theory of value, not a labour theory of value. It's still how much utility people have for a good that's determining it's value.

And like I said, we can still acknowledge that workers are being exploited, it's just that the labour theory of value doesn't serve as the foundation for this claim of exploitation, because the labour theory of value doesn't work. That doesn't mean, "capitalism good."

Originally Posted by yo soy el mejor

elph, since you don't like to read, here is a simplified chart for you to start knowing what you are talking about before blabbing as if you do (very upper class white man of you):

The chart you posted is about alienation. While that is another aspect of Marx's theory, it's an entirely different concept from what Elph was explaining, which was Marx's use of the labour theory of value to talk about exploitation.