[mystraline]

You do not EARN 1B$.

You mass exploit labor at scale to exfiltrate 1B$.

You commit wage theft to obtain 1B$ (the largest theft category).

You union bust and fire workers who try to fight for better working conditions and wages.

You engage in monopoly practices to obtain 1B$.

You engage in corruption via 'campaign donations' to lay down laws that benefit you and harm others.

Doctors earn. Engineers earn. Scientists earn. LABOR EARNS.

But billionaires never *earn* 1B$. They exfiltrate, steal, and corrupt.

[simianwords]

Hi, this is called “Labour Theory Of Value”. And this is imo a popular theory of value creation a lot of people believe in and it has populist memetic value.

But Labour Theory Of Value has been debunked and is mostly not used anymore.

[mystraline]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

- Upton Sinclair

And, well, you are right that there are 'debunkments' of Labor Theory of Value. Of course, they are put out by hard right-wing laissez faire capitalist enclaves, like Mises. I would never expect them to take a dispassionate view of capitalism, given their extremist position.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/three-arguments-debunking-marxs...

[simianwords]

I asked ChatGPT this:

"who is the single one contemporary person who took labour theory of value seriously in an academic sense?"

ChatGPT: G.E Cohen.

(G.E Cohen is an Analytical Marxist BTW)

Here's what G.E Cohen has to say specifically on LTV:

1. "labour theory is, moreover, false" [1]

2. "The labour theory of value is not a suitable basis for the charge of exploitation laid against capitalism by Marxists, and the real foundation of that charge is something much simpler which, for reasons to be stated, is widely confused with the labour theory of value." [2]

[1] https://andrewmbailey.com/money/readings/cohen

[2] https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3128-the-labour-theory...

So here you have the one guy who took this flawed concept seriously, * from the side of Marxism * and then has to conclude that it is false.

[mystraline]

Wait a sec.

You want me to *trust* the output of a hypercapitalistic slop machine whose owner bulk pirated most of the western knowlege for money. And he wants to scan the eyeballs of everyone for his shitcoin (and kicked out of multiple countries for abuses).

And, you expect me to read that slop drivel? Fuck, no.

I had the decency to use my own words. You can too. And, "Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans." I do not care about your propaganda clanker.

[simianwords]

You didn’t even read what I wrote. Step back for a sec.

[mystraline]

You didnt write it. You slop machined it.

I quit after this: "I asked ChatGPT this:"

Even I had enough respect to respond with my words and my intellect. Even if my thoughts are in possible error. You didnt have enough respect for even that.

[missedthecue]

In tears laughing that people still believe the labor theory of value. How is this possible. What's next, bringing back miasma theory and spontaneous generation?

[mystraline]

Well, for starters, Elon Musk actively adheres to the Labor Theory of Value. He named it differently, with the "Idiot Index". Except, its an inverse LTV.

Both theories use the SAME formula.

Final Price = Raw Materials + Labor + Overhead + Profit

The difference is that Marx pushed that labor is what makes a thing have value. Wheres Musk pushes that humans have 0 value, and should be removed whereever possible.

Same thing, different conclusion.

And know what happens when we get "perfect idiot index" of 1.0? There are no workers, no money, and wealth is accmulated purely in the hands of the elite. Hell, even Ford saw this in tge early 1900's - who'd buy cars if nobody can afford them?

[missedthecue]

The labor theory of value is the idea that a commodity’s economic value is ultimately determined by the amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it. I'm not a Musk fanboy and I don't know what the idiot index is, but if he buys into the LTV, he's incorrect.

There are very very simple proofs to invalidate the LTV, for example the fact that two items requiring identical amounts of socially necessary labor can have very different prices. In my experience, I have only met one person who earnestly believed it (an old college classmate) and his basis was self-admittedly purely ideological. In the end, I think the most elegant way to think about it is to reverse the causal arrow. Labor does not create value; perceived value decides which labor was worth doing.