[yogthos]

If you're worried about rent seeking wait till you find out how a traditional business works. The owner of the company takes all the profit, and then pays out a small portion of that profit to the workers doing the work in form of wages.

On the other hand, in a coop the profit is shared fairly amongst the people actually doing the work. It's frankly incredibly that somebody thinks this is a worse model of compensation.

[cercatrova]

The labor theory of value has basically never been shown to work, while the subjective theory of value, however many its flaws, has been shown to work and bring us the world we see today.

[zozbot234]

The labor theory of value is approximately true when capital intensity is low, however.

[leethaxor]

It's never true. It's like a broken clock - it's right 2 times a day. When the conditions are exactly correct, it seems like the labor theory of value is true - but it's not. Consider a simple example - food production. Nothing changes about the labor necessary to produce it but that doesn't mean you won't have to sell your produce way under price (or let it rot) if you and other farmers make too much of it.

[yogthos]

The question isn't about the amount of labour needed to produce food, it's regarding who collects the profit from the labour that is done. Not sure what point you were trying to make with food production there.

[leethaxor]

The labor theory of value has nothing to do with collecting profits and isn't concerned with who gets it. It argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value)

My point is that value is actually not determined by "socially necessary labor" but by supply and demand, even within a commune. The food you produce will rot if you and others produce too much of it = it has no value, and nobody collects profit (not even in the form of social capital) because everybody lost any possibility of selling for a good price by producing too much.

On the other hand during a shortage people will start valuing food much more than they previously did, gradually paying higher price as they have less of it - again totally disconnected from the "socially necessary labor" required to produce it.

Most importantly - the value of most if not all things is subjective and different based on time, place, etc. Even within a commune - some people simply don't like peppers, so even though you put a lot of work into them they have no value to these people (which will quickly change once there's a food shortage).

[yogthos]

Of course it has to do with profits and who gets it. That's the whole context for introducing the theory of value in Kapital, which one of us actually read while the other evidently skimmed a wikipedia page.

Labour theory of value is not in anyway at odds with the idea of supply and demand. In fact, the whole idea of value in Kapital is derived from supply and demand.

The labour theory of value states that the inherent value of a commodity is directly related to the combination of labour and cost of the machinery needed to produce the commodity. This is what acts as the foundation for the value that the market assigns to the commodities. The market value doesn't just appear out of thin air, it's rooted in material costs of production.

To put it bluntly, you have an infantile understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate here.

[cercatrova]

True, in a commune or something like that, it does work. I think though once we hit Dunbar's number, then it breaks down and we need a subjective value based market.

[yogthos]

Yeah, subjective theory of value brought us the world where a handful of individuals have more wealth than over half the world population, while the rest live in shit.

[cercatrova]

Industrialization via the profit motive has been the single greatest lever of increasing humanity's quality of life.

The people who say that the rest live in shit in my experience have never been to a third world country and actually lived there. If they did, they'd realize just how shit the first world is.

As long as we have scarcity of goods that must be distributed somehow, communism only works in theory, not in practice.

Edit: Ah, I see, so you're a tankie who grew up in the USSR yet still supports them. Thanks, I have no need to speak to you further.

[kybernetyk]

Your communism is showing.

[yogthos]

And proud of it.