>On Sep 7, 9:56 am, "Andy F."
tesco.net> wrote:>> Nonsense. However intelligent you are, you won't produce a damn thing
>> without doing some work.
>So what? How does that translate into economic value?
It just refutes the claim you made in the previous post.
>If you add up all the hours Edison spent figuring out the electric
>light and put that against the hours someone puts in digging a ditch -
>and the one ends up with a ditch and the other with a revolutionary
>invention which transforms civilization, how do you compare the value
>of the labor?
Obviously, that's two different kinds of labor, which have different values.
>In this case the market decided. Edison became a millionaire, the
>ditch digger presumably earned his usual $1/hr or whatever. By the
>market deciding I mean that the people who purchased the product of
>the labor decided. So that today a top basketball player - for his
>labor exerted - may make even more than Edison (by some comparable
>scale). That's what in effect the fans are willing to pay to watch him
>play. Who are you or anyone to say it should be more or less?
I didn'ty say they should be paid more or less.
>So, where is the value in the labor and how is it measured?
It's usually measured by how much they get paid.
>The value in fact was clearly in what people who bought it were
>willing to pay for it - and that's it.
The amount people are willing to pay depends on the supply.In equilibrium
the value is also determined by what people are willing to work for.
>If Edison had failed in his efforts - despite all his labor - he would
>have made nothing.
>So where is the value in the labor?
Obviously it's a gamble.
Say there's 1000 people trying to invent a lightbulb. They each do $1000
worth of labor.One of them hits the jackpot and gets $1 million.It all adds
up.
>There are instances where someone might make a fortune doing
>absolutely nothing. For example, if oil is discovered on his property
>or a developer desperately wants his property to complete a real
>estate project. Or you purchase stock in a company, one of which fails
>and the value goes to zero, but the other becomes Google and you make
>millions.
>So much for the "labor theory of value".
I presume you mean the theory that commodity values are proportional to
labor inputs. That theory is only true if you make some simplifying
assumptions - one of which is to ignore the effect of land rent.Economists
have known that for centuries.
The socialist version of the LTV is different, being a normative claim that
people 'should' be paid according to their labor.
And what Lincoln said was sometrhing else again.He just said that without
labor there wouldn't be any capital. This is a self-evident fact which only
an idiot would try to deny.
