radon1 wrote:evilgenius wrote:radon1 wrote:evilgenius wrote:refute the Labor Theory of Value as patently false on its face
How?
It's pretty simple. Markets decide value, not the transmorgrification of a product into something of value because somebody sweated over it. There isn't anything magical about human labor that can establish value. The magical thing is what people think something is worth.
This does not refute anything. How do the markets decide value? How do the people think that something is worth this or that?
The basics of the labor-value theory are irrefutable, because this is not really a theory, this is simple common sense. You can argue about added value and its appropriation, "exploitation" and stuff, but this is a separate matter.
Uh, supply and demand is the simple answer. There isn't, and can't, be some glowing powerful labor generated goodness that magically transmorgrifies into value. A prospector can labor for years and only find a single ounce of gold. That doesn't make that ounce suddenly worth several year's wages in a substitutionary profession. At the used book store you don't pay a price which accounts for the author's either long or short time writing a work. Neither does that price have any relationship to the publisher's marketing. You see what they want to charge and decide if it is worth it to you, for the idea, which is in this case the commodity. You may be able to make an offer if you don't have the money. Just as in the case of gold, the individual buyer may have certain predilections which encourage them to spend more than somebody else for the book, maybe it's Das Kapital or the Philosophical Writings of 1848 and you have a compulsion to spend as much as you have in your pocket every time you see them in a used book store? People's fascination with gold is equally fraught with predilections which can lead them to spend more than somebody else would have encouraged them to through competing with them by bidding an amount for a good. Some people actually believe that gold has a value outside of what people are willing to pay for it. These instances of predilection, however, are generally outliers. Statistically, they don't have much of a bearing upon the overall market.
Similarly, from the point of view of the average spender, people will spend upon a thing the amount they can afford out of the contribution it makes to either their routine or their life. Mostly they spend out of the contribution it makes to their routine. This is why rent can be a catalyst for oppression in the boom phase of boom and bust rental markets. It's also why, in terms of contribution toward one's life, most people who declare bankruptcy in America are doing so for health debt related reasons, even if they do have insurance. Rent is particularly troublesome toward routine not only because it is typically the largest component of it, but because its cost tends to be locked in and because the options, moving somewhere else, can be onerous. Other parts of routine, like what you pay at the supermarket come with far less onerous options, substitution goods or changing one's mind about what to have for dinner.
Have I suffered with this long enough? What part of this is not obvious? Maybe what you are really asking is what money is? That's something for a whole different thread, I think. And those threads already exist.
It is just possible that you are fixated upon the idea of predilection, its impact and the share it has in determining what people will pay for something. Maybe you have a theory that includes that as a much larger component of the picture? It isn't that predilection is not important, you see, or what Plantagenet says about marketing wouldn't be true. If you go that direction be prepared to deal with oligopoly, product life cycle, marketing channels and other things that can sway a putative point well outside of its original frame of reference. Just don't forget that no matter how much a person may fondle their Iphone, and not be able to sleep through the night without checking it, they still need a roof over their head and however many meals a day to keep the wolf away.
