Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Max™]

Uh, just to note using said example: if you spend a week and make a shovel and use it to dig a well in a week... you still have a shovel AND the well, in no way is that less valuable than spending twice as long to wind up with just a well.

[Imic]

You could use sheepswool as currency.

[Max™]

I think that might get awkward for the folks from new south wales and some parts of scotland, asking them to make their girlfriends run around naked and all.

Oh shit I zinged myself (scottish ancestry and such) for a silly joke, again!

[SalmonGod]

The very idea of exchange being the necessary basis for all distribution of resources is, I think, founded in a mentality we've culturally inherited from a history of scarcity.  That scarcity no longer exists for most things, and we just haven't managed to part with that mentality.  There is no need to hoard things which are not scarce and only part with them in exchange for something else.

There's a legitimate argument for exchange being necessary for scarce physical goods luxuries.  But for everything else, I fail to see why we even need to worry about it anymore.  Just make sure enough is produced, which is trivial at this point to do, and freely distribute.

[Zangi]

The very idea of exchange being the necessary basis for all distribution of resources is, I think, founded in a mentality we've culturally inherited from a history of scarcity.  That scarcity no longer exists for most things, and we just haven't managed to part with that mentality.  There is no need to hoard things which are not scarce and only part with them in exchange for something else.

There's a legitimate argument for exchange being necessary for scarce physical goods luxuries.  But for everything else, I fail to see why we even need to worry about it anymore.  Just make sure enough is produced, which is trivial at this point to do, and freely distribute.

I get what you mean there. That is basically the star trek federation.  Pie in the sky.
Transitioning toward it takes many steps... forwards and backwards.  Or chaotic upheaval(s) and oppression of those who do not take to this strange new world order.

In the meantime.  Currency is a necessary tool to be leveraged.  Possibly price fixing and ensuring that at least enough people still work in essential industries, like food and distribution/transportation of mail/goods/everything.

[SalmonGod]

It is certainly far removed from the structure of life today, and most cannot imagine it.

But when we're talking about how things can function in theory, there's no reason to back off from it.  And it being a problem of imagination among most, the best way to make progress towards it at this stage is to make sure it's part of the discussion.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

On the point of people having a lack of imagination or vision, I'd submit the two videos Historia Civilis made about the prosecution of Charles I of England.

As well as being a fascinating historical event, this describes how much unimaginable trouble the successful revolutionaries had with prosecuting their deposed monarch, a man who quite literally tried to sell the country out to foreign mercenaries in exchange for being returned to the throne. And keep in mind that I do mean revolutionaries here - all of Charles' true allies and royalists were wiped out in the war. He is fully in the hands of people who at best want to make him a figurehead before parliament and at worst want to cut his throat and work with an unformed idea of popular sovereignty.

And yet they cannot figure out how to fucking prosecute this guy, because the only definition of treason they've ever known is "crimes against the king", and he is the king. Most of that second video is them going through wild galaxy-brained schemes to prosecute him, at one point trying to charge him with murdering his father (which definitely did not happen) because at least that would satisfy their conception of treason. These people are revolutionary thinkers! It's 1649, the American and French revolutions are a century and a half away!

That is the response I give to people who bring up the various technical issues of a worker's economy - you are no different than those revolutionaries. Your whole life has imprinted assumptions on you, that even if you are a wild radical, you still have and don't even know you have! Changing the world means changing the world in ways that even you cannot anticipate. Not having the full answer today doesn't mean there is no answer.

And it is no excuse for inaction. Sometimes you just have to behead your kings and try your best.

[SalmonGod]

That is the response I give to people who bring up the various technical issues of a worker's economy - you are no different than those revolutionaries. Your whole life has imprinted assumptions on you, that even if you are a wild radical, you still have and don't even know you have! Changing the world means changing the world in ways that even you cannot anticipate. Not having the full answer today doesn't mean there is no answer.

And it is no excuse for inaction. Sometimes you just have to behead your kings and try your best.

For sure.  I get really frustrated when talking about criticisms of how society operates vs how it should operate.  It's too common to get bogged down with people obsessing over every detail, and expecting you to have the answers.  As if today's world was built on anyone having all the answers.

[Naturegirl1999]

I don’t think the USSR had all the answers when it came to power, I don’t think the Confederation of States knew the answers either. Answers were found once they were in power and needed to make them...

I don’t think I worded this right, what I’m trying to say is that sometimes you have to figure things out when you have the ability to act on the ideas you have...

I am bad at wording thoughts. What if people who read this quote my post and under the quote give what the7 interpret ,y wording to mean? So I can know what people think of what I write and can thus try to word things better, or, maybe you do know what I mean and I’m underestimating my thoughts to text conversion skills. (Conversion skills? Is that the right words?)

[Xantalos]

This seems like a good thing for me to view when I need to get into a particular sort of mood. That burgerpunk work was something else.

[Red Diamond]

Uh, just to note using said example: if you spend a week and make a shovel and use it to dig a well in a week... you still have a shovel AND the well, in no way is that less valuable than spending twice as long to wind up with just a well.

It indeed half as valuable, because the value of something is the total amount of labour expended in it's production which has been halved.  One thing that confuses everyone is that value is not the same thing as use-value, something's usefulness has no relationship to it's value.  The more useful things (water) often have very low value, while useless things (ie money) often have a high value; that use-value is not value-value should be obvious. 

The second thing that confuses people is that it works on averages.  If we use individualistic examples as with the guy digging the well, the average is the same as what the person is doing, so there an instant intuitive clash because we know that personally if we were more productive we would make more money; that is because we are one individual among millions.  The actual value of the well is the average of all the labour expended by all the people in general to make one well.

That means that I can profit if I am the only one using a shovel to dig a well, but if everyone does this we are all worse off than we were before value-wise.  Having twice as many wells is more useful but that was not what we were talking about.

The very idea of exchange being the necessary basis for all distribution of resources is, I think, founded in a mentality we've culturally inherited from a history of scarcity.  That scarcity no longer exists for most things, and we just haven't managed to part with that mentality.  There is no need to hoard things which are not scarce and only part with them in exchange for something else.

There's a legitimate argument for exchange being necessary for scarce physical goods luxuries.  But for everything else, I fail to see why we even need to worry about it anymore.  Just make sure enough is produced, which is trivial at this point to do, and freely distribute.

Scarcity has gone nowhere unfortunately, since the environment remains a scarce resource as we are finding out in all manner of unpleasant ways (Global Warming etc).  The idea we live in post-scarcity is based upon a situation where labour is no longer scarce due to machinery, unfortunately your increased ability to labour does nothing to resolve the fact that the actual resources remain finite.

[Reelya]

Also it seems like some people come up with absolutely ridiculous points when it's explaining a system they're not used to. The thing about trades being for like-value and saying "but if we did that nobody would ever gain anything and nothing would ever be created!" is really, absolutely ridiculous.

We trade like-value for like-value now. That's what trade is, it only occurs when both sides believe they're getting fair value. Saying that because it's between worker-owned organizations then suddenly this basic fact of trade won't apply anymore, therefore nothing would ever get created in such a scenario. It's a very, very silly argument, and clearly is a red herring.

When you make something, whether that's crafting or by digging up that iron ore I mentioned, the value is the labor value, and you can then exchange that for something of equal labor value. But that doesn't mean "nothing can be created". You embed the labor value into the object or service by expending the required labor. That's where the value is coming from, and that's why there's no issue with "creating value" in that scenario.

Trade, by itself, never creates anything. Even if one side gets less than the other, the amount of total value cannot change via trade. Therefore it doesn't matter whether trades are for equal-value or not, that has nothing to do with how value is created in the first place. The value is that if you make something that took 1 hour to create, then you can trade that to someone else for something of equal value (equal amount of time investment). So, under that scenario you will get richer to the tune of 8 labor-hour-values, per day. You're not going to get richer any faster than that in a capitalist system, unless you're skimming off the top of someone else's labor, and thus depriving them of their full 8 hours of value.

[McTraveller]

It indeed half as valuable, because the value of something is the total amount of labour expended in it's production which has been halved.

I am wondering if this is a language/translation issue?  Canonically the "total amount of labour expended in" the production of something is its cost, and cost is not the same thing as value.  And I think what you term "use-value" usually is just called "utility." But cost is related to value; I have heard it defined this way: cost is how much it takes to make something, value is how much you are willing to exchange for something, and utility is how much benefit you get from something.  These are related but subtly different concepts.  Also note that this is entirely independent of monetary systems -adding money to the equation just adds a dimension, it doesn't change the base principles.

To illustrate the link between cost, value, and utility, let's consider our person digging ore again. If it takes too much time to dig up the resources, the cost (time and effort to dig it up) is not worth whatever else you would be doing with your time and effort: you value your time and effort doing other things higher than the cost of the ore.  But now say you know that if you dig up the ore you can make a shovel and so get even more ore, faster.  Now the cost to dig that initial ore is the same: it takes the same amount of time to dig.  But now you value it higher: you are willing to exchange your time to dig, because having the ore has high utility: once you have it, and make a tool from it, you reduce the cost of digging more ore.   Now people who value ore less (are willing to exchange less for it) are more likely to exchange things for it.

That said, I agree that creation of wealth and/or value is orthogonal to corporate versus individual "ownership" of goods.  I don't actually see capitalism versus communism so much as "economic" systems but more they are "socioeconomic" systems.  That is, supply and demand still applies to socialism as it does to capitalism; marginal utility doesn't change depending on who owns production.  The differences are all in how the wealth is distributed and the social side effects of each. 

To Reelya's point: I hope I did not contribute to the confusion about trading and value.  I believe trading generally does always create value for at least one party in the trade.  In fact the "capitalist" approach to trades is where each party is trying to maximize their own value gained from the trade.  That is, each wants to get the most possible for the least cost.

[Naturegirl1999]

On the subject of trade:
Country A wants rugs from Country B, and country B wants pickaxes from Country A.
Country A finds pickaxes easier to make than rugs.
Country B finds rugs easier to make than pickaxes.
The work needed to make a pickaxe could also be used to make 3 rugs in Country B, while Country A could make 3 pickaxes or 1 rug. They have specialized in making what they can make more of using the same labor, and trade with each other to get what they don’t make.

Question, does this make sense? Or did I miss something?

[Zangi]

Trade, by itself, never creates anything. Even if one side gets less than the other, the amount of total value cannot change via trade. Therefore it doesn't matter whether trades are for equal-value or not, that has nothing to do with how value is created in the first place. The value is that if you make something that took 1 hour to create, then you can trade that to someone else for something of equal value (equal amount of time investment). So, under that scenario you will get richer to the tune of 8 labor-hour-values, per day. You're not going to get richer any faster than that in a capitalist system, unless you're skimming off the top of someone else's labor, and thus depriving them of their full 8 hours of value.

Work hour values of the base materials needed to make the products in question.
Does wear and tear of the tools and machinery needed to make the products also factor in?
Is there room for ‘rainy day’ values, like a total breakdown of a tool or machinery earlier then expected.  Or is that subsidized from somewhere else?

And my base aggrievance with this is still the question, why would I want to trade for something I have no use for?  What am I gonna do with some iron ore or an excavator as a hair salonist or chef?
Why would someone trade with me if they don’t want what I make? 
Do you know how many hours it can take to facilitate a trade for something I want if the person-with-what-I-want does not want what I make?

You either have some sort of fixed price currency/credit/value thing or everything is free for everyone and you hope there are enough people willing to do the jobs in the less then popular sectors, even if most of it becomes automated.
Edit: Or you have a yuge agency / buncha marketplaces / middlemen that would facilitate the trades, throwing their work hour values into the mix.