I disagree with tax & rent being lumped together. I have no problem with my (high) tax rate as it supports education, infrastructure, etc. The outrageously inflated rent goes to the same guy that stole 95% of your pizza in the first place.
While I agree in principle, when tax dollars go to corporate tax cuts, handouts to failing financial institutions, and billionaire lunatics selling snake-oil space-based internet "solutions", its easy to get disillusioned about taxes.
We absolutely should be taxed to a high degree, but that money needs to be spent on collective benefits, not private corporate interests.
That’s a different topic though! Don’t conflate collecting funds with usage/distribution of funds. We all need to accept that we have to pay (high) taxes. That the upper 10% haven’t paid their fair share in decades and that there is misuse has nothing to do with my tax rate. We need the upper 10% to pay way way more and we need better accountability for usage of the money. Pretty much regardless of where you live on this planet by the way.
And to blowing up children for being born to the wrong group of people.
Yeah I think playing into the idea that it’s being taken unjustly though is bad. It’s better to portray it like the rich roommate never paying their portion of any of the bills and leaving you to cover it all.
Some people don't seem to understand the meme and think this pie represents a companies whole revenue. This pie represents the revenue generated from an individuals labor. The current glaring issue with capitalism is that people think your employer is entitled to a slice of the labors pie. Your employer is entitled to Zero percent of the revenue you generate from your labor! But sadly the only reason the imaginary line in the stock market goes up is become employers and "investors" have stolen your value. While the meme is over simplified it's accurate. Also your bosses/CEOs labor value is far lower than they would have you believe.
Shop local, give money to co-ops, unionize your work place, unionize your living space (renter unions are a thing.), volunteer as often as possible, give leftovers to the homeless if you regularly don't eat your leftovers, VOTE, attend town halls when able, get to know your neighbors even if you don't speak the same language or have a rough past with them, I can go on but these things can help at the local level and prevent the race to the bottom we're currently stuck in.
Eh, actually there are arguments to be made for the employer being entitled to a share of the value, yes.
They provide the materials, the tools and machinery, the designs that are being made (assuming some sort of manufacturing company for this example). They also carry the risk (unless of course they are a corporation, the ridiculous entity created to reap the advantages of personhood while avoiding all its responsibilities and drawbacks).
So, a slice of the pizza should be for them, but certainly not 7/8.
Also your bosses/CEOs labor value is far lower than they would have you believe.
Zero is a very low number, yet they make my annual every month
I wouldn't call it zero, per say - they are pretty good actors, performing for a crowd of rich fucks.
They might be good at what they do, but where's the value?
YES
I know my enemies
They’re the teachers who taught me to fight me:
✔ Compromise
✔ Conformity
✔ Assimilation
✔ Submission
✔ Ignorance
✔ Hypocrisy
✔ Brutality
✔ The elite
Reminder that while the labour theory of value can be practical to understand certain aspects of society, it is still culturally biased and not "objectively" true.
What creates value can only be answered in a cultural framework.
I'm not following what you specifically mean.
Could you provide an example of when the theory fails due to a culture's differing views of value?
There's not even academical consensus what value actually is, AFAIK. Do preasts add value to anything with their labour? If not: Do social counsellors? What if a priest acts as a counsellor? Ask different economists with their theories of value and you'll get several answers.
Economic theories aren't as rigid as theories from the natural sciences or mathematics. They are dependent on the culture in which they are perceived. A non-capitalist society would have different theories or value (or none at all) than we do.
This guy can explain it properly, I'm not an economist and kinda regret making that comment.
I actually watch Unlearning Economics, though only his video essays and not his streams. It's been a while since I've seen this one.
So what we're meaning is how much of Western culture undervalues care-giving since it produces no product, so stay at home moms, nannies, therapists, etc.
I thought of another example. In more nomadic and naturalist cultures, actually doing things to the environment destroys value, while leaving it be and allowing it to recover creates value. That is something else that is not accounted for in any theory of value to my knowledge.
An example would be American Indians in their dependance on foraging and hunting. I think that gives creedance to the idea that they thanked the things they harvested/hunted (I don't know the factuality of that), since from their perspective they were only a burden that the ecosystem was 'kind' enough to support.
Thank you for that comment. I feel like finally someone understood what I was trying to get across.
Probably formulated it badly, but still: the answers are a bit exhausting.
EDIT: Thought of another example of your qase where harming nature decreases value. Having to buy carbon certificates for releasing CO2 models the destruction of value by polluting the environment.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
This guy can explain it properly
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
A reminder that the labour theory of value is not a marxist concept. When people wave their hands around and say "labor theory of value isn't objectively true!!", they're shadowboxing a ghost.
Value != price
How is it culturally biased? It's a theory of how exchange value functions within capitalism
You're right. It's one theory. There is however ongoing debate on which theory is "correct".
This vid explains it quite well and with Simpsons clips so the hour of video is bearable:
Yeah but the way you said made it seem that value (exchange value according to Marx) is determined by cultural factors, thus making it untrue. The debate around labour theory of value have existed since the 19th century.
I was talking about the theory, not value. Sorry if that didn't come across.
Now that I think about it: isn't value culturally determined in many things? Why are apple products more expensive than other computers with the same specs? Why is a ticket to a Billie Eilish concert more valuable than one to my neighbor's indie rock band?
There is a difference between use value and exchange value
isn’t value culturally determined in many things? Why are apple products more expensive than other computers with the same specs? Why is a ticket to a Billie Eilish concert more valuable than one to my neighbor’s indie rock band?
It really seems like you're conflating 'value' and 'price' here.
Don't the two correlate?
A theory o value doesn’t necessarily say anything about price. As you said: “vale != price”.
Don’t the two correlate?
What a mess we've made.
As far as I understand: Price tries to measure value. Therefore: A price needs a value, but value doesn't need price. They correlate but are not the same.
Were am I making the mistake? Genuine question.
Price tries to measure value
This is probably where your misunderstanding is, and it is the justification Adam Smith gives for the free market. If price is a measure of value (or an approximation), then the price must be fair (after all, you are paying for an equivalent of use value).
Marx evaluates price and value differently. He delineates 'real price' (the price to produce a good, including costs to the capital owner and the cost of labor) and 'market price' (which includes the profit extracted). He also defines value differently - Smith argues value is mostly subjective (which is a necessary condition for price to be a measure of value), while Marx argues that value is more specifically related to the labor that goes into it and the use-value, and criticized capitalist systems for fetishizing commodities and obscuring the role of labor. To Smith (and to those who take issue with the 'labor theory of value'), value justifies the price (it is the price a buyer is willing to pay if they were perfectly rational), but to Marx, the use value is more firmly grounded in the commodity itself (a shovel produces the same amount of use-value whether it is sold for $5 or $25), and the market price they end up paying is dictated more by other factors than the value it represents. The capital owner, then, is adding to the cost to the buyer without adding to the 'use value' , which means they are either stealing from the laborers (since the product exists thanks to the labor that produces it) or the purchaser (who is being taken advantage of by paying more for a product than what the product's use-value is). In either case, the owner is only able to do this by virtue of their ownership - of the means of production and the product of the laborers. They only part they play is choosing to put their capital to use and choosing to sell the commodity, and both the labor and the buyer operate at the risk of the capital owner withholding what others have produced (the buyer needs goods to sustain, and the laborer needs wages to purchase goods to sustain, but the capital owner puts their capital to work only to make a profit)
TLDR - People incorrectly associate LTV with Marx, even though other proponents of capitalism also make heavy use of it (namely Adam Smith), and they also assume that LTV is a statement about the price of a commodity dictated by the labor it embodies (e.g. I moved this boulder 200 miles, who is going to pay me for my value?) and instead it is a description of labor's relationship to value and is generally agnostic to the degree. It is, as you said, a framework for understanding how labor relates to value. While 'stolen surplus value' is explicitly a marxist statement, 'labor theory of value' is not, and is often misunderstood anyway as a way of dunking on something marx does not assert.
But I have moved 8 tons of dirt from location A to location B. Who else is going to do it? I deserve compensation for my task.
