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[Maximum Spin]

"Now, we all know the minimum wage isn't enough to live off of. But what if we made it even lower?"

Well, the sad fact is, people keep making more of themselves, and now we have more people than we need, so the value of human labour is virtually zero.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There is literally no source of value other than labor.

[Reelya]

In a sense. If you can make 4 socks in an hour, but I can make 8 socks in an hour, then i can trade you one of my hours worth of the socks for two hours worth of something else you can make, and both sides will think it's a good deal.

So the labor value of a sock for example will be the labor value of the person who's most efficient at making socks. So if there's someone who makes 60 socks per man-hour then the labor value of a sock will be one man-minute. So, yeah, someone else can make socks but if they're shittier at it, their hour isn't worth the same as someone else's, at least as far as sock-minutes goes.

[Maximum Spin]

There is literally no source of value other than labor.

While Marx believed this, it's not true. The source of value is "human want". If humans don't want your labour, it has no value.

[MrRoboto75]

Imagine the invisible hand giving you weekends, health benefits, PTO, and a living wage, instead of being earned literally at gunpoint.

[Reelya]

There is literally no source of value other than labor.

While Marx believed this, it's not true. The source of value is "human want". If humans don't want your labour, it has no value.

It can be true, in a sense, but only in a market-driven system.

The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it.

Breaking this down. If some particular person can make 10 of something in an hour, then the socially necessary labor to produce one unit is 6 minutes. So, if a minute is a dollar then the value is 6 "minute-dollars". Nothing in this guarantees that everyone's labor is equally valuable. If you can only make 5 per hour, your labor is only worth half as a much: the value of what you made is half the economic value of what someone else made.

Where the market stipulation comes in, is that the "socially necessary labor" determines per-unit costs, but total price is constrained by supply and demand considerations. Unless you get cartels, monopolies etc. Take the example of someone selling bottled water in the desert. It could be argued that the value of the water is the scarcity, but actually it's the fact that firstly, they have a monopoly in that scenario, and secondly, the effort for someone to actually go and get more water themselves is quite high, thus they're willing to pay you for the water you already got.

[Maximum Spin]

There is literally no source of value other than labor.

While Marx believed this, it's not true. The source of value is "human want". If humans don't want your labour, it has no value.

It can be true, in a sense, but only in a market-driven system.

The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it.

Breaking this down. If some particular person can make 10 of something in an hour, then the socially necessary labor to produce one unit is 6 minutes. So, if a minute is a dollar then the value is 6 "minute-dollars". Nothing in this guarantees that everyone's labor is equally valuable. If you can only make 5 per hour, your labor is only worth half as a much: the value of what you made is half the economic value of what someone else made. Nothing in this observation implies or requires everyone's time to be of equal value.

Where the market stipulation comes in, is that the "socially necessary labor" determines per-unit costs, but total price is constrained by supply and demand considerations too, as long as nobody has a monopoly or can gate-keep people from competing with them.

No, the problem with this is the assumption that all goods (or services) are equally desired. If you can make ten of some widget in an hour and you sell them for $6, it doesn't follow that, if someone spends an hour taking a shit, I want to spend $60 for it.

So even as you've posed it, the value of a particular amount of labour is only fixed per product.

[Reelya]

Supply and demand negates that however. If something isn't desired, we make less of it. The end price reaches equilibrium with the cost of manufacture.

For most commodities, this is true, since if the price of something is high related to it's effort to produce then more of it will get produced, and vice versa: if the value is low relative to the amount of effort needed, then effort will be diverted elsewhere.

[Maximum Spin]

Supply and demand negates that however. If something isn't desired, we make less of it. The end price reaches equilibrium with the cost of manufacture.

A momentary look at the economy will demonstrate that this is empirically untrue.

(And people still have to defecate.)

[Rolan7]

In a sense. If you can make 4 socks in an hour, but I can make 8 socks in an hour, then i can trade you one of my hours worth of the socks for two hours worth of something else you can make, and both sides will think it's a good deal.

So the labor value of a sock for example will be the labor value of the person who's most efficient at making socks. So if there's someone who makes 60 socks per man-hour then the labor value of a sock will be one man-minute. So, yeah, someone else can make socks but if they're shittier at it, their hour isn't worth the same as someone else's, at least as far as sock-minutes goes.

What about the person who provides the cotton, and who pays both of those sockmakers the same 1 sock for every 10 hours of work?  Now *there's* the value creator.  Without them, how would the cotton farmers get their weekly sock?

A momentary look at the economy will demonstrate that this is empirically untrue.

(And people still have to defecate.)

A momentary look at the economy makes it clear that we don't have "too many people".

[RedKing]

Welcome back to the nightmare.

Thanks. So....is this just pretty much used for reinventing the Marx wheel now?

[Maximum Spin]

A momentary look at the economy makes it clear that we don't have "too many people".

Have you seen our labour force participation rates? Maybe we aren't looking at the same economy here.
Of course, employers like to CLAIM that there are always labour shortages, because they always want to convince more people to enter their respective fields so they can pay even less.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Welcome back to the nightmare.

Thanks. So....is this just pretty much used for reinventing the Marx wheel now?

Oh no, AmeriPol will never accept my role as the meta-neo-Cassandra. I personally am just using the thread to dance among the ashes, but I'm not sure what keeps everyone else here.

[Maximum Spin]

Oh no, AmeriPol will never accept my role as the meta-neo-Cassandra. I personally am just using the thread to dance among the ashes, but I'm not sure what keeps everyone else here.

Gonna be straight with you, I don't see any ashes where I'm standing. Now, California, they've got ashes for days.

[Reelya]

For the rest of the world it's rubbernecking your slow-motion trainwreck.