The distinction between use value and exchange value already exists within LTV. For some reason you cannot understand that both are not the same thing and you keep on confusing between the two.
I already know those terms and didn't use them intentionally. Use value and exchange value are bloviated and unnecessary terms from Marx's outdated model. The value of goods and services comes from the consumer, not the laborer.
Marx had already thought about what you're saying, that's why he came up with 2 notions. The one that you are describing and the other which actually determines how valuable is something IN THE MARKET.
What do you think "the market" is? It's the collection of consumers who value various goods and services based on their needs and wants. Those individual valuations are (collectively) a major contributing factor in what determines the market price. Eventually the two converge in the market and you get the equilibrium point or "market price."
You keep on conflating the latter for the former. Or just outright deny that latter even exists. But even 12 year old children know that if thing A costs more than thing B then thing A is more VALUABLE than thing B by the virtue of that cost alone.
My brother in inceldom, you can attach any price tag on anything that can have a price tag. You can price something at 10x what the market thinks it should be priced at. That makes it more expensive, not more valuable.
A 12 year old would spend five minutes on the internet to learn the difference between price (exchange value) and value (use value). Value is how much utility a consumer gets from the product or service. It has a relationship with price, but is a separate variable.
The same 12 year old would probably read something like this which was conjured up by a five second search, if he's not too busy looking at naked girls on his phone.
The difference between value and price with examples.
simplicable.com
That's incorrect. If the market price is mean of the values that every individual consumer assigns i.e. what marx would call "use value" the production would become impossible for a lot of things. Let's say people come together to determine that Maclarens should cost no more than $1000. Then there still exists a market for Maclarens but production would be impossible because the company would be in perpetual loss.
That's not how that works and you know this. What happens in reality is that products are priced relative to similar products or existing products and adjusted accordingly, after manufacturing, labor and every cost associated with making the product available has been factored in. Market forces (read: demand) then determines the price adjustments (even luxury items aren't immune to that).
Anyone who has done cost accounting or even runs a business for that matter can tell you that what goes into making a commodity is the biggest factor in determining the market rate of that commodity. This is not based on some nebulous subjective notions of what people consider valuable.
Anyone who knows business, finance, or basic economics would also tell you that price and value aren't the same thing. KEK
A business might have something like $100,000 worth in assets, but be valued at much higher during sale, because of its history of yearly operating income. The final price of selling the business would likely hover in the ballpark estimate of those figures.
You might retort by saying that irl people are willing to pay more that 1000 for a car. But that's not what determines the price of that car. People are willing to pay it because they HAVE TO. Because of all the raw material, factory investment, machinery, and labour cost that goes on into making that car.
If people could afford it they would buy SpaceX rockets too. The reason there exists no market for SpaceX rockets for commoners is not that no one values a spacex rocket. The reason is that they cannot afford all that which goes on into making one.
As I said above, the price factors in the manufacturing cost, but the market value changes that price. If demands dips the price too low to the point where it's not profitable (close to breakeven or operating at a slight loss to weather the market storm), then obviously it will could cease being a product. That simply means that people don't value the prodcut as much as the price point.
More semantics. Doesn't matter what word you use if the underlying notion is the same for the point we are discussing here. Might as well say apples are different than oranges. As if that would somehow change the fact that both are run by same market principles.
I don't know if you're arguing
as a Marxist or
on behalf of Marxism, but regardless, the entire LTV rests on this one premise that labor is a commodity. It needs it to be true, else the whole thing crumbles like Jenga.
Anyway, the difference matters because products are not services and vice versa, and in economics the definition of a commodity includes "fungible" (tradeable with equal value) goods and does not include labor (it's still a service, but is not classified as a commodity).
Apples and oranges are both the same thing: fruit product. Two things being under the same influences does not make them the same category of things.
I am making the distinction between how valuable something is to you as a product and how valuable is something in the market. Denying the fact that the latter is indeed a real measure of value, going against all common sense, is not a valid criticism of LTV
I'm not denying that distinction and don't know what gives you that idea; it's something I've acknowledged already here in post #28.
That wasn't a criticism of LTV, btw. The criticisms are in how Marx classifies labor and rests his entire thesis (of worker exploitation) on that. I don't need to reinvent that wheel. If you're geniunely interested, there's practically libraries of texts on just that.
If you actually put your money (lol) where your mouth is you would've refused the free gold brick because it's useless to you. But it was VALUABLE enough for you to take it with a big smile on your face. But then you somehow turn your back and go on to deny that value, in a never ending semantic game about how muh "price" is different from muh "value". As if things that have more price are not inherently more valuable in the market.
It's insane that I'm having to even debate this with a grown adult.
Your example was silly. I was telling you that I'd just sell it for the market value, which means that it would be the equivalent of if you gifted me the dollar amount of the gold brick. To me, it's the same shit in that instance, because I don't value the gold any differently than the going market rate of a gold brick.
I did tho. As far as I can see stealing is unethical. Which also goes for stealing the value of another's labour.
I'm much more interested in the moral arguments, rather the technical points of economics and economic theory, which aren't doing the both of us any good in this discussion anyhow, so let's just stick to those if we can help it.
And your retort boils down to "muh no stealing is going on cuz muh LTV is wrong cuz muh" *insert some semantic bs about how price and money is not an inherent measure of value"
I didn't make any moral claims or arguments thus far, but you've made two claims already: theft of "labor value," (the implication being the Marxist position that profit is that theft of value), and something about evil in your first post that you haven't properly formulated or articulated.
I'm interested in hearing your own personal arguments, if possible.
