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by igf 3588 days ago
> The "trap" that is the Labor Theory of Value may not be the most profitable but maybe it's the most ethical

The labour theory of value doesn't even logically hang together in any way, when you think about it.

Okay, let's suppose I spend a whole week making a giant sculpture of a dog turd out of macaroni and glitter (suppose also that I've done a terrible job even within those parameters). What is the value of that dog turd? According to the labour theory of value, it's worth quite a lot... but nobody is actually going to be willing to exchange anything else of value for it. So in what sense does it have value?
3 comments
rukuu001 3588 days ago
Could get traction on Kickstarter with a good video.
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imron 3588 days ago
Stranger things have happened. Some guy got $55,000 to make a potato salad: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zackdangerbrown/potato-...
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cyborgx7 3588 days ago
Yes, amount of Labor doesn't always determine value. But this article isn't really about value, is it? It's about pricing.
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jasode 3588 days ago
>But this article isn't really about value, is it? It's about pricing.

Perhaps he's responding to _you_ and your comment instead of the article? You wrote:

>the Labor Theory of Value may not be the most profitable but maybe it's the most ethical, both compensating the workers fairly and not ripping off the consumer.>

You had connected "value" to the "pricing" ... but if tallying labor-hours to measure value is flawed (which you agreed with), what clarity is made by using "labor-hours" to justify "ethical pricing"? Isn't it better to ignore LTOV if it makes us less knowledgable on what we charge others and what we are willing to pay?

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damptowel 3588 days ago
Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_problem

I assume the only objective way to calculate value would be to see the planet as a dynamic system, put a baseline price on energy and do some kind of thermodynamic accounting of every transformation process in the chain, basically energy expense bookkeeping. I'm aware there's some theories about this, but I never looked into any of it.

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igf 3588 days ago
Which still has nothing to do with value, which is why I value more highly a Stradivarius violin than the pile of ashes which you could obtain by burning a Stradivarius violin.
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