> What he missed is that if you're putting labor into making something nobody wants (the classic example being toothless combs for bald men), you are not only failing to producing any value, you're arguably reducing the overall wealth present in the market. The labor theory is no longer a part of mainstream economics, replaced by marginal theory [2], but I suppose many people still imagine value of things as equal to the labor put into them.
Uh, what? Why do people that have never read Marx think they can get away with this kind of thing? You only have to read the same wiki page you have linked to to see that what you claim Marx never thought about is in fact very much so part of the theory. According to Marx commodities under capitalism have different kinds of "values"; one of them is their "use-value", which measures whether the item is in fact useful for a given purpose for anyone. In a market economy a commodity only realizes its value (usually seen in the monetary expression of its exchange-value, or price) when it is actually sold: ie, value is realized at the point of sale, not production. Thus no matter how much labor you put into something, if nobody actually wants it for anything it has no value at all. This kind of misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the LTV is so popular it has its own nickname: the mud pie fallacy, see for example http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/law-of-value-3...
This whole thing is explained, plain as day, in all of Marx's works on this topic, including the most famous one, Capital. Why people that have never bothered to even read one paragraph of it like to pretend it says things it does not say? Beats me.
I just read the article you linked. It's full of utter nonsense; it is not serious economics. One example: it talks at length about how there are different forms of value, namely individual value (which any normal economist would call production cost), and social value (the actual amount the commodity sells for). It then goes on to say, "there are two basic forces that govern the way individual values become social values" [emphasis mine]: (A) average productivity, and (B) interaction of supply and demand. The first is described mostly correctly. When describing the second, the article says, "We only learn how much labor society has put into widget making when we enter the market and compare the products of our labor with the rest of society." Okay, but that is not the only thing we learn from the market price. We also learn whether the society needs our commodity at all. Since the article talks about "social value" it almost implies that our commodity will always have some value to the society (it's called "social" after all), but that is often not the case at all.
But here is where the article is most clearly wrong:
> But most important to the MudPie theory, demand doesn’t create the social value of a commodity. It only helps determine if labor has been apportioned to the right tasks. Labor is creating the value
First, the article is contradicting itself. It reduces everything to "labor is creating the value" -- if that were the case, why mention "governing" force (B) above at all? Also note, which value are we now talking about? Individual or social? (I assume the latter). Second, it conveniently presents the MudPie argument as "belief that demand is creating value". No, that is not what the MudPie argument says at all. It is the recognition of demand (which is an intellectual process) that is creating value, and that value can be (although not always is) wholly separate from the labor cost (or the "individual value").
Consider the following example. I buy a used or antique piece of furniture from someone who used to own it and who now believes the piece is quite useless since it is old. In addition, the owner does not mind selling me the piece at a low price since he had got out from the 20 years of using it all the "value" he believed he could get out of it. On inspecting the piece, I determine that the piece was made by a known designer. I resell the piece for ten times the amount I paid for it, and for three times its retail purchase price when it was new. Where is the labor here (ignoring transportation cost)? The answer is that the "labor" here is in me recognizing the potential value of the piece either from the appearance or through matching the label through a catalog (about 5 minutes of work). Now exactly the same process will occur when a reseller of a commodity finds a more profitable way to sell it. The reseller is creating value.
TL;DR There is also intellectual labor involved after the item is made but before it is sold, ignored by Marx entirely and purposefully.
> Since the article talks about "social value" it almost implies that our commodity will always have some value to the society (it's called "social" after all), but that is often not the case at all.
Seriously? Again? My goodness. Listen, we have already established you are the kind of person that goes around pretending to discredit an entire branch of economics without having the slightest clue about what that branch even claims to say. Fine. But repeating the same nonsense after being told that it is nonsense is just too much. The entire freaking idea revolves around how individual labor which under capitalism is done by private initiative is converted to social labor, which is through market mechanics accepted as socially necessary. Of course that whether or not that labor was in fact desired, has some value for society, is a factor, and that is a fundamental aspect of the LTV. The Wikipedia article explains this, the article I linked to explains it, I explained earlier that value under the LTV is realized at the point of sale, ie, when someone actually goes through and establishes the usefulness of the labor invested by exchanging something (usually money) for it.
The rest of your post conflates price with value, which are different things according to Marxian thought, so again it is pretty useless as far as "debunking Marx" goes. Again, this is even explained in the Wikipedia article you linked to but that obviously haven't read.
Now, do you want to believe the LTV and everything Marx wrote is wrong without having any actual idea of what that is? That's cool. Just don't try to have a conversation with someone that has bothered to read it and think you can get away with it.
Agreed. I think most people who talk about fairness and equality are saying "don't fuck me before I've even started" rather than "we must both have the same outcome."
Maybe this common misunderstanding is a hangover from the fear of the red menace?
I generally agree with most of what you are saying, but honestly this litte-s socialism, fascism, communism thing you are doing is making me gnash my teeth a bit :)
Socialism was and is at its core about the working class as a whole owning the means of production, becoming the only social class in existence and in effect ending the cycle of class struggle that has defined human history for the past few thousand years (at the very least since Marx & Engels first formulated scientific socialism. Utopian socialists had similar visions of a future society but usually lacked the framework to clearly articulate their criticisms of existing societies).
The term Communism, although used since the XIX century, became mainstream in the XX as a reaction against the perceived reformism or capitulation against capitalism of the then-called "socialist democrats" of the Second International. Technically, though, Communism only means the end-goal of the socialist struggle, again a classless society where everyone works according to their capacity and receives according to their needs (see 'The Critique of the Gotha Program' by Marx, or Lenin's 'State and Revolution' where the distinction between the revolutionary transitional stage and the classless, stateless end-goal of Communism is clearly made. Yes, Lenin thought a society without any State at all was desirable). The fact that States ruled by Communist Parties implemented imperfect versions of socialism, or had any number of problems small or big, in no way should make you pretend that the definition of Communism is "the government owns everything". Or, much worse, that it is in some sense just the same thing than Fascism. This makes no sense historically or theoretically, and is about as accurate as pretending that parliamentary democracy in industrialized nations is at its core all about spending 10% of their GDP in weapons and bombing the shit out of third world countries.
And some people argue laissez-faire capitalism does not naturally lead to concentration of capital and oligopolies/monopolies. I guess they should play MMOs ;)
This particular anecdote relies upon incompetent competition:
> Other buff sellers kept selling them at the going rate … so I did the rounds of the cities each night and bought up any HQ buffs which were under my price and added them to my stockpile.
As well as high barriers to entry:
> Buffs could only be made by the ‘doctor’ class and only by the top level doctors.
Basically there is massive demand for buffs, but the supply is restricted by the avian meat availability. Thus a huge demand for avian meat with low supply. The price should go up, and this guy brought the market price in line by outbidding everyone else.
He corners the market, and like any cornerer, he has to overbid the "market price" to shut everyone else out. Now he is in a weak and vulnerable position, to any of his competition. He has a large supply of capital goods that he overpaid for.
The overbidding for avian meat should induce more "mining" (hunting) of the avian meat -- it should be wildly profitable relative to effort invested. This should tend to raise supply, making the overbidding market cornerer's job even harder.
Anyone with half a brain should mine some avian meat and then offer to sell it for (pinky to lower lip) 1 billion dollars (or whatever). The market cornerer will either pay the asking price or relinquish some control of the market.
Since there is no monopoly on buff producers (per the anecdote), the meat miner can lower the price until it sells to a buff producer (whether the cornerer or not). The miner extracts the profit, and the buff producer, with such high input costs, should have smaller margins on the finished product.
> Anyone with half a brain should mine some avian meat and then offer to sell it for (pinky to lower lip) 1 billion dollars (or whatever). The market cornerer will either pay the asking price or relinquish some control of the market.
What prevented this from happening is that supplying a months worth of buffs required a lot of avian meat. And avian meat was a pain in the arse to harvest - you had to roam all over the map looking for the changing spawn points and if I remember correctly, you would only have maybe 20 pieces of the resource for every hour hunting - it was seriously time consuming. So I never encountered a hunter who was selling bulk amounts of avian meat - they all sold in dribs and drabs and so had no negotiating power with me. The small amounts they potentially could individually withheld would have almost no impact to my manufacturing -the only way to affect me was if they ganged up, which would have required substantial coordination.
I was also very dynamic with my pricing - the amount I set was based on what other vendors offered. With my huge bankroll (thanks to first mover advantage), I trumped any bid and scared other doctors away - they simply knew they couldn't compete. As soon as they gave up, I reduced my prices.
Ah, makes sense. I would still tell this story in terms of a first-mover advantage, as well as one of innovation. The point is, in a market economy, it is nearly impossible to maintain a monopoly (or oligarchy) over time. Your margins will get squeezed by new competition enticed by your margins. It seems like you got lucky in discouraging your competition, but I don't think that's a reliable tactic. A determined competitor could severely damage you and open up the market by forcing you to overbid.
I think innovation is baked into your assumption, which doesn't necessarily hold true.
On a separate note Video games are some of the best laboratories we have to allow us to test economics - and iirc papers have been done to test and learn from these environments. I doubt I can dig any up, if I can, I will post it.
No one has pointed out that the whole business ends up increasing market efficiency--the end result was that the price for buffs stabilized over the course of the month.
>The overbidding for avian meat should induce more "mining" (hunting) of the avian meat -- it should be wildly profitable relative to effort invested. This should tend to raise supply, making the overbidding market cornerer's job even harder.
I believe in this story, there was a limited supply of meat - it couldn't be infinitely mined.
If I understand correctly, two things enabled (the flippin’ brilliant) tobtoh to maintain his oligopoly:
1. An artificial, rigid caste system that allowed only a tiny pool of players to produce the best buffs
2. An artificial, rigid "ingredients" system that ensured the best buff could only be made from one extremely rare material (and no amount of innovation could escape this)
Anarchists would argue that those types of market restrictions are bound to cause oligopolies to form!
That said, even with his oligopoly, it sounds like he nearly single-handedly created a huge market for that avian meat, and that market enriched a lot of other players.
He didnt create a market - left to normal dynamics in video games, the resources would have been distributed normally, probably more efficiently on average as well.
Check WoW out for example - the analysis on the spreads, ideal prices to sell ores, gold, are at OCD levels of accuracy.
Addons scan the auction house for undervalued goods, undertake pricing strategies, hold historical data on those goods and allow people to know whether an item is under or over valued.
Websites are dedicated to identifying prices across all the servers and that leads to people doing cross server arbitrage.
He didn't improve the market, he just made a monopoly. A pretty cool one at that.
What's the alternative exactly? Sell your resources as cheap as possible to avoid being corrupted by money? Surely there should be a way of capitalizing on your natural resources to improve the living standard of your people, and the explanation for most OPEC countries not being great is a big more complicated than this.
I've seen some estimates saying that the total percentage of waste coming from households can be as lows as 2%, depending on how you count. For example, this cites an EPA study: http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/Statistics.htm
The same page mentions a higher bound of 20%, but in any case it seems reasonably well established that the vast majority of the waste produced (at least in the US) comes from the manufacturing/industrial process itself, not from households.
A book that goes into quite a bit of detail about this is "Gone tomorrow" by Heather Rogers.
I'd still like to have any real quotation. EPA claims about "Municipal Solid Waste":
"We estimated residential waste (including waste from apartment houses) to be 55 to 65 percent of total MSW generation. Waste from commercial and institutional locations,
such as schools, hospitals, and businesses, amounted to 35 to 45 percent."
See also what screwt writes: the rubble, for example, is not the kind of waste that has an environmental impact of the household waste (e.g. batteries with toxic materials etc). The important thing is environmental impact, not the absolute weight of the waste. I agree however that EPA seems to be too silent about the waste produced by factories.
tl;dr: Building waste is mostly rubble (not really necessary to recycle); these stats are by weight (density of rubble >> density of household waste). Treat these stats & suggestions of "no point doing any household recycling" with caution.
I think these statistics are somewhat misleading.
Waste from building tends to be rubble and dirt. Some of this can be re-used (eg filler for roads), but also the environmental impact of disposing of dirt is not much.
More importantly, the stats on the link above give waste measured by weight. A skip full of rubble (densely-packed stone) weighs far more than a skip full of general trash (loose-packed plastic bottles). A comparison by volume would be more informative[1].
That doesn't go for all building waste, and I don't know what comprises most industrial waste. All in all, I suspect cutting everyone's household waste to zero would make a significant impact on reducing the volume of waste produced nationwide; I don't know though whether it would make as much as a 50% impact.
[1] Obviously there are difficulties comparing by volume since household waste can be compacted to a great degree - my point is that comparison by weight skews heavily to the side of building waste.
Huh. Looking at statistics from Germany, the total waste is seperated into four categories: waste from building demolition and construction, waste from industrial processes, waste from mining, waste from private households and offices. Waste from demolition and construction makes up more than half of the total waste, the remaining three categories are split about evenly.
I'm surprised that the construction waste is that high. Apart from that, it seems that manufacturing and construction waste is less dominant over here than it is in the US. Odd! Maybe I'm reading the numbers wrong or they're counting really differently. FWIW, Wikipedia says that the per capita waste amount is about 500 kg, referring to just the category of private households/offices I assume.
> What is the end result of growth that makes societies "better"?
The need for constant economic growth is just a side effect of how a capitalist economy works. That's why they all go into deep shit when growth slows down too much or stops. Nothing good or bad per so about it, in my opinion (although the improvement of productivity has obviously some positive effects).
It's a necessary condition for a functioning capitalist economy. I can go into more details if you want, but the fact that the key economic indicator is GDP growth and that all economies go into turmoil when growth approaches 0 should tell you that this goes beyond the opinion of a bunch of people. It's an emerging effect of the rules of capitalism.
The earthquake + tsunami killed something like 5,000 people and counting. How many have died from radiation poisoning or even the hydrogen explosions so far? I'm counting two people missing and some radiation poisoning.
We're looking at a substantial risk of further hydrogen explosions until the cooling is stable and a risk of radiation leakage to those nearby. There is a slight risk of radiation further out, but it's unlikely to cause significant harm. So the primary danger is to plant employees and those trying to cool it down or fight fires. It's unlikely to be able to kill large numbers of people, though it's likely that someone will calculate x% increase of cancer * 128M people (all of Japan) and publish that number.
But let's count the casualties and weigh them against the 5,000 or so who have died from the earthquake already:
- 2 workers of cooperative firm were injured at the occurrence of the earthquake, and were transported to the hospital.
- 1 TEPCO employee who was not able to stand by his own with his hand holding left chest was transported to the hospital by an ambulance.
- 1 subcontract worker at important earthquake-proof building was unconscious and transported to the hospital by an ambulance.
- The radiation exposure of 1 TEPCO employee, who was working inside the reactor building, exceeded 100mSv and was transported to the hospital.
- 2 TEPCO employees felt bad during their operation in the central control rooms of Unit 1 and 2 while wearing full masks, and were transferred to Fukushima Daini Power Station for consultation with a medical advisor.
- 4 workers were injured and transported to the hospital after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 1.
- 11 workers were injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 3.One of the injured workers got medical treatment on March 16th, but the worker reported a flank pain. We required to the offsite center that the worker should be transported to the hospital. After that, the helicopter of JSDF arrived and transported the worker to the FUKUSHIMA Medical University Hospital at 10:56AM
- Presence of 2 TEPCO employees at the site is not confirmed.
The earthquake + tsunami killed something like 5,000 people and counting.
The absolutely horrific results of the earthquake and tsunami in no way make Fukushima a minor deal. Yes, it has killed MANY fewer people then the tsunami, but that does not make it a minor deal!
I never said it was a minor deal. My heart goes out to the families of the two workers missing at Fukushima Dai-ichi as well as to those injured.
But I don't get the panic. I mean a run on Potassium Iodide tablets on the US west coast? Seriously?? I don't know if I should be grateful that they at least found something that could be effective or sad that they expect significant amounts of radiation to get that far.
I need to figure out how to use actuarial tables to I can convert these exposure levels to something like "cigarette equivalent risk" by comparing cancer rates.
A run on potassium iodide tablets on the US west coast is just plain silly, but the way to combat that is to discuss exactly how radiation spreads, not to try and argue that Fukushima isn't that bad.
> A run on potassium iodide tablets on the US west coast is just plain silly, but the way to combat that is to discuss exactly how radiation spreads, not to try and argue that Fukushima isn't that bad.
How can I do one without doing the other, given the nice "radiation plume" graphics, in "arbitrary units" no less, going through the news?
I'm not trying to minimize the problems, I'm trying to be realistic about them. After the first hydrogen explosion, if you look through my HN comments, I warned that there were likely to be more. Those are very dangerous, but to the plant employees fixing this, but not to anyone who isn't nearby. Those people are heroes, putting themselves in danger to protect everyone else from further radiation leaks.
But I sincerely believe that nobody who isn't in Japan or in the sea nearby is at any serious risk.
The conversation about nuclear power is emotional, its not rational. I know very intelligent people who simply cannot reason about it, it frightens them at an emotional level and they can't get past it.
If your approach is rational, you look at this reactor, and you look at how the accident got started, and you think man that really sucks, a 9.0 earthquake and a 30' tsunami? Just like when two 747 jumbo jets collide as one is trying to land on the same runway that another is taking off. You look at what lead up to and ultimately caused the accident, you assure yourself that its not a systemic problem (jumbo jets don't have massive attraction to other jumbo jets for example) you grieve the tragedy, you adjust your planning and your procedure, and you move on.
No matter what happens at Fukushima Daiichi, even if all four of the reactors and their spent fuel rods turn into slag candles fused into the foundation of the plant, a rational person would say "Gee it really is great that we don't have magnitude 9.0 earthquakes with accompanying tsunamis every year, if we did, and they can do this to a nuclear plant, it would be foolish to take those risks."
But an emotional person isn't reasoning, they are afraid. And scared people see black and white, they look at a scary situation like this and say "If we have no nuclear plants I can't be scared like this again!"
No amount of reasoning about the risks makes them less fearful, dealing with fear is a personal issue that goes on inside a person's head. You can try to guide their internal debate but at the end the day, they have to agree not to let their fear override their ability reason, they need to work through it.
We can talk about physics, we can talk about statistics, doesn't help the fearful. We need to embrace them, and say "Yes, I can see that you are very afraid of nuclear power stations. It is completely reasonable to be afraid of nuclear power stations failing and causing grave harm to those around it. But rather than let that fear run us around, let us try to understand when we should be afraid and when we should not be afraid."
People living near that reactor have every reason to be afraid right now. What is going on is not "in control" and what will happen tonight and tomorrow could be worse than what happened yesterday and the day before. People who live near nuclear power reactors might be afraid, but if they choose to they could learn what to fear and what not to fear. They could learn that if a major disaster stuck their town (like say an asteroid strike, or a magnitude 9.0 earthquake) they might want to move 50 or so miles away from the nuclear power plant just in case. They might create plans for just such an option, perhaps renting a storage unit in a nearby town and stocking it with some supplies, etc so that they could relocate there and stay for several days or weeks without having to do anything else. Since even this nuclear disaster (and Chernobyl before it) take time to develop fully, you know there will be time for you to respond (we assume you're not touring the grounds). When you make a plan and take action like that, then you've taken steps to conquer your fear, you are no longer the victim you are now prepared. This is just one of a number of ways we can help people deal with their fear of these things.
To summarize, the ongoing disaster at the plant is a major disaster, certainly for everyone who works at the plant and for people that live near it. Their lives are going to be disrupted forever. For the rest of us, it will become one of those "where were you when ..." kinds of stories like when the Challenger blew up. Our lives will be the same but we will have a painful memory of a tragic event we "witnessed".
On the way into work I heard on the radio a quote from either a senator or congressman which was "Do you still think meltdowns are rare? we just had three at once." I realize that plays well to the scared crowd, it would be helpful if we could help change it to "It is difficult to operate a nuclear plant safely in the presence of magnitude 9 earthquakes, fortunately that level earthquake is very
rare."
"What is the worst-case scenario for Fukushima Daiichi?
It's difficult to be definitive, because information is limited and often confused, and the outcome will depend on the decisions the plant's operators take."
They don't discard anything, and just because something is less serious than Chernobyl it does not make it "minor". Also, so-called experts have been consistently wrong in estimating things in the past days.
Seriously guys, just wait and see for a few days before shouting from the rooftops how amazingly reinforced nuclear power has come out of this. You are not helping anyone.
It honestly just seems that you already know that nuclear energy is a must-have, so you are reasoning backwards from there. If the accident was very serious it would call into question your ideas, so it must be minor, even if it's not over yet and some serious shit still could happen in the future. I just can't support this way of reasoning.
just because something is less serious than Chernobyl it does not make it "minor"
But that's creating a seriously false dichotomy: Nobody is saying that this situation is "minor", and I most definitely don't think it is, and did not post this to downplay the situation.
I posted it because Chernobyl comparisons are like the Godwins Law of nuclear power. Things can be very bad without being comparable to Chernobyl.
And that's far from the only time this sentiment has been expressed on HN.
Lots of pro-nuclear advocates on HN have repeatedly said that the Fukushima accident is minor. This was especially true a few days ago, but even now some are continuing to maintain it's no big deal.
The 2011 Japanese tsunami has killed at least 7000 people. The Chernobyl accident killed up to 4000 people. Problems at the Fukushima power plant are far less severe than Chernobyl (see the article) so they are relatively minor.
Or do you feel that a life taken by cancer is worth more than a life taken by drowning??
