Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
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Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
Personally, I think some people's work is worth more than other people's work. If you're job involves raw sewage for example, I think you should earn a premium. Or if you're job puts the stress of life and death in your hands. Cardiac surgeons have way more stressful days at work than I do.
At most, only one order of magnitude greater seems fair. Nobody's job is a billion times as hard as any job.
I have several questions for the Marxists in here, because i like the idea of this, but there seem, to me, to be some very serious issues with the labour theory of value as it has been presented in the comments and elsewhere I have seen. Can y'all help me understand?
Skilled Labour: As others have pointed out, of course, skilled work takes multiple thousands of hours of education to be able to succeed. While I don't necessarily claim that this makes a Doctor worth more than a Custodian in the same hospital, I, as an educator, must ask: if the educators who educated the doctor got paid in hours of value, where did the value of those hours come from, if not the future labour of the doctor? Those thousands of hours to train the doctor are what allow the doctor to perform the labour, and so the cost of the doctor's labour must be higher, just as the value of a porcelain bowl must necessarily include the labour of the miners who quarried the Kaolinite, the labour to transport the kaolinite to the kiln, the labour to produce the fuel which fires the kiln which bakes the Kaolinite, etc. Training is labour, so the value of the future labour of those being trained must marginally increase for every hour spent training. In order to calculate the value of that training labour, therefore, must we not estimate the value of all the future labour of the doctor, then divide it over the expected course of a career? Is it possible for someone to go into "training debt" by choosing a career for which their training is not utilised? (For instance, if a person trains to be a doctor, but then chooses to become an artist instead, all of those hours spent educating them to be a doctor have been paid out to their educators, but they will not utilize that training, so does the value of that labour retroactively diminish, or is the student liable for the lost potential labour?) Is there some better framework for calculating the value of training labour?
Perverse Incentive of Technology: In a theory of value where the value of a thing is in the labour required to produce it, improvements in technology, which increase the efficiency of a process or otherwise reduce the amount of labour required to produce something, appear to me to have an inflationary effect. Technology makes each thing require fewer hours of work to produce, making each marginally less valuable. This means that, if a producer were to hide their use of technology, and claim they used more hours of labour than they did, this would cause the value of the product to stay high. As long as no outside auditor watches and times every step of the process, efficiency improvements are incentivised, not because they allow labour hours to produce more, but because minor, unreported improvements in efficiency can be capitalised to produce profit. In fact, the entire concept of labour value calculations requires impartial auditors at every step of every manufacturing process, otherwise there is an incentive for fraud, claiming that things required more hours to produce than they did.
Labour with Increased Risk: Some labour is, inherently, more dangerous than others. Time is not always a factor in safety. From literal risk of bodily injury, to risk of infectious disease, to the risk of malpractice. How do you incentivise people to go into professions which carry greater risk without making their labour worth inherently more? The custodian at the hospital carries a significantly greater risk of suffering infectious disease —and losing the opportunity to produce value— than the custodian at the museum of natural history. From a simple cost-benefit perspective, the increased risk to the hospital custodian effectively increases the "costs" of doing that labour, as it carries with it the negative expected value of lost future productivity due to illness. Does the hospital custodian, who accepts greater risks to do what is otherwise a similar job, produce greater value per hour worked, as both jobs are necessary, but the hospital job has a lower value for the worker per hour worked, due to the expected cost of risk?
The Auditor: Ultimately, who decides the Value of every product and service? In order for a Labour Valuation to work, we must ensure that value fraud is impossible (or at least very difficult and must carry with it severe disincentives if discovered). Who audits the declared valuations? Who does the calculations for expected value of training? Who establishes regulations to ensure quality of products and services, and how do they measure efficacy? But, most importantly, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who determines the value produced by those who audit value? Who determines the number of auditors that are necessary, or redundant? How do you ensure that there is no corruption amongst the auditors?
My understanding is that "To each according to their needs" is the Marxist perspective. No need to determine value.
So then what's the point of the labour theory of value? Why do we need to use hours of labour as a measurement of value?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gay space communism, as long as it can work. I'd love to live in a money-free society, and just take basic income to do what I love: teaching science to others and exploring it more deeply myself. I think that "to each according to their needs" is an admirable baseline, but how do you convince people that it's worthwhile to buy into that, since it would take serious buy-in from the vast majority of people to make it work (otherwise, the coffers of the state will be empty, and you get mass death)
Personally, I'd be fine with a state takeover of every industry, then turning everything into a worker co-op. Of course, as a public educator, that's already how it works for me, but my sector could use stronger unions and the right to strike (in my jurisdiction, neither of these are present)
The post wasn’t made to suggest this analogy as the solution but rather as a thought experiment to demonstrate the evil of money hoarders. Once enough of us recognize the evil and farcical nature of capital then we can work towards a solution.
Absolutely, and this post is highly simplified. The reason I'm bringing Marx into this is that many other commenters have been saying that this is effectively an oversimplification of Marx's Labour Theory of Value, and I've been trying to examine communism, socialism, and other theories of governance in an effort to be an informed citizen of the world, as you say, working toward a solution. I firmly believe that, if you don't have that solution worked out before you begin, you end up just playing catch-up. So, I'm asking the Marxists ITT to help me understand the nuances of the Labour Theory of Value. I recently read about several communes which replaced money with the promise of labour, or the evidence of labour in the public good, and I like the idea, but I want to understand the nuances of how such an upending of economic theory would work. I really want this boat to hold water, so I'm trying to find any potential leaks before we set it adrift on a roiling sea.
The question of education ignores that the doctors also did large amounts of labor as students, not just their teachers.
So that provides the solution . . . .pay students for the time they spend working on their future productivity through education.
For 2 - the average across an industry is fine. In that case, the attempted fraudster has the same issue as criminals questioned separately . . . Their stories won't add up.
For 3 - we don't currently see hospital janitors paid a premium.
4 is just the same as 2.
I appreciate the response, but I don't understand how this answers my questions. Could you give me a bit more detail?
The question of education ignores that the doctors also did large amounts of labor as students, not just their teachers. So that provides the solution . . . .pay students for the time they spend working on their future productivity through education.
~~This doesn't actually answer where the value comes from. My question is: I presume that you value education, and that teachers should be paid for their labour, but from where does the value of that labor derive? If it isn't coming from the future expected productivity of their pupils, then it's coming out of thin air. Saying "let's also pay the students during that time" doesn't solve the problem. In fact, it compounds it, because if you're paying both the students and the teachers for just doing those things, then from where is the value originating?~~
Edit: I think, on reflection, I might understand what you meant on the first point: are you suggesting that the additional value of the doctor's work is how you pay the teachers, and thus the doctor's future payment remains the same, because it was already paid out to them and to their teachers, for the period of time they were training? Because that makes some sense, and I'll have to think about it for a bit. I still don't get any of the rest of your arguments.
the average across an industry is fine.
This incentivises oligopolistic collusion and price fixing.
Their stories won't add up.
See 4. Who determines that their stories don't add up? How much of the population must be engaged in the bureaucracy of measuring every detail of reported value?
we don't currently see hospital janitors paid a premium.
And? Why shouldn't we? Are you seriously using the system under capitalism to justify not doing better under socialism? This argument is whataboutism. I can disapprove of the capitalist practice while also pointing out problems with an opposing theory.
4 is just the same as 2.
Patently false. 4 is a necessity because of all of the others. Someone has to determine what labour has value, someone has to determine and publish the values of each product and service. The labour theory of value requires a regulating system. This must either be a command economy, setting the values of everything, or it must effectively be an honour system equivalent to the free market, where the producers simply declare the value of the things they produce and it's up to the consumer to determine the fairness of different prices. So, I ask again, since you can't just brush off the question like it's asked-and-answered: Who are the guards who set the value of all things? Is it the "invisible hand" of the free market "self-regulating"? (in which case, how do we know that excess value is not being assigned to products by their producers?) Is it the audit of a bureaucrat whom we must trust not to be corrupt? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? How do we ensure that this doesn't simply devolve back into capitalism or, just as bad, oligarchic entrenched corruption?
Again, I want to make this work, but I don't understand how these questions can be answered without saying, effectively, that we must have a command economy setting the prices of all things, and trusting that the bureaucrats who are running the place aren't lining their own pockets. I don't want to hear about how "capitalism is just as bad". Yes, that's why we need something better. So I want to understand how this is better in these specific respects.
I'd give all my money to turn back the hours...
The 90s were only ten years ago!
There was a nice movie on this premisis. In time
"Took another person an hour to make"
This part is going to be difficult.
I think it all comes down to arguments over what "freedom" means, and which definition creates the most actual freedom for the most people. Ideas like OP's hours analogy only work if they're backed up by force, because in many cases people are willing to trade tons of hours for something that only took one hour to make. To stop exchanges like that from developing into markets, the system would have to ban that kind of trading and enforce it with violence. Anything truly scarce would require an equitable allocation system, creating the opportunity and motivation (and therefore the certainty) of corruption, eventually forming an elite class who get first dibs on scarce things.
That doesn't condemn the idea though, because elite classes exist in every system, including capitalism. So it's not a binary situation, it's one of degree. At this point centrally managed economies like socialism and communism don't have nearly as long a history as capitalism, so the failure of the world's very few instances is hardly a basis to condemn the concept.
Anyone who needs, currently have a LaborToken backed by blockchain available freely for use.
What if you had a multiplier for things like education or years of experience... You could say 2x for every year of experience or 4x for degrees, you'd still never come close to justifying billionaires
Some systems consider receiving the education as on par with performing the job it prepares you for. I.E. you get paid to attend school and it doesn't work out like you have to put your life on hold until school is finished.
Yes, but ftr, there's already a film with this premise.
Some 2010's pseudo-thriller with Justin Timberlake that had a super generic name like "On Time" that I can't quite remember. I don't know if it's any good, because one really stupid line from the trailer I recall "4 minutes for a cup of coffee?!" with the most lackluster delivery still lives rent free in my head, and I couldn't bring myself to watch it lol
Its a fun movie if you don't take it too seriously
It's not really the premise. Kind of the opposite.
It was okay.
The name was In Time so you were damn close.