New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 188
Karl Marx turned an economic idea called the labor theory of value into a theory of resentment and exploitation. The thing is, it’s not just that Marx was wrong for adopting the labor theory of value; it’s that the labor theory of value itself is also fundamentally wrong. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, aimed especially at younger listeners, host James Lindsay spells out the failures of both the labor theory of value in general and of Marx’s theory of labor resentment on top of it. Join him to learn, and share with younger listeners so they can too.
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2 comments
My theory is that the mis-rulers of this world understand economics very well, but most people have nofa king idea about even the most fundamental concepts that impact economics. Because they don’t understand the first thing about economics, they rely on vague and emotional notions of superficial “fairness,” etc, and that’s why they fall for blithering impossible nonsense like “labor theory of value.” Because people are very very stupid, they will get suspicious when you tell them that labor is only one of the inputs that may or may not create value more valuable than the cost of the inputs, and they will reject us and our words as capitalist BS. They prefer the dimwit who tells them they would be rich royalty if it weren’t for their boss. I think we’re doomed unless people somehow pull their heads out of their derrière, non?
Apparently Marx and his followers totally ignore the role of markets in determining “value” and think that a strong hand can control the price of anything.
So, when we look at energy or effort expended to produce anything, we are looking at several factors, not just labor. We are looking at the market, or exchange, value of the goods produced. We are looking at the speed of production. And we are looking at the quality of the product, which affects whether they buyer will go to that seller again, or look elsewhere.
Thus, high value products produced fast at excellent quality should bring both short and long-term profit. Demand for products can be affected by marketing, thus marketing itself becomes a product. And marketing can make a product that should be seen as very valuable get treated like garbage.
Thus, a producer who makes bad mistakes about the market can get crushed. And so can a worker offering his labor. Further, markets can change and ruin a producer that was doing fine before, and make rich someone who was limping along before. And then marketing and propaganda can come in and ruin a perfectly good product, or make an inferior one seem better than it really is.
What Marx and his followers hooked us with is that, from a Christian point of view, we all have the basic right to life, yet the “system” kills people all the time for no good reason. And the fact that people die every day who have the right to live is quite true. So there is an inclination towards something like UBI or controlled markets, or universal health care, even though such a plan could be economically ruinous.
The missing link, from what I can tell, is the demand and a path towards COMPETENCE. If one is not competent enough, one will die early regardless of how precious his life may seem.