Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

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There might be some phenomenon he is pointing out here, but his logic in doing so makes no sense. Even his internal logic makes no sense.

He starts out by talking about the value of a product (commodity) determined by the labor theory of value. Then he jumps to how much someone is compensated in salary. Then he jumps to a company's value and the ease at which someone at the helm can raise capital.

In terms of comparing two systems of value, this is jumping all over the place. How value is added to a specific nascent commodity going through an assembly line is a different thing than the ability of one person versus another to raise capital and how that affects a company market cap and is different than what they should be compensated.

People like Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk wrote well-reasoned arguments against the labor theory of value, which might be right or wrong, but at least they have a clear line of reasoning. This piece talks about value but jumps all over the place. There might be an interesting phenomenon being pointed to, but there is no well reasoned argument.

Here's my argument against the labor theory of value: if you spend one hour making mud pies, and I spend one hour making sandwiches, then our products have equal value according to the labor theory of value.

Not really, since you are swapping an easily available commodity ‘mud’ for bread and fillings. You should specify that the value added to the mud would be unequal to the value added to the sandwich ingredients to make the point you want to. Since you begin with different initial conditions you ‘muddy’ the conclusions.

OK, here's another refutation of the labor theory of value. A woodworking crafter with twenty years of experience takes five hours to make a bookshelf. A person who just started woodworking today takes twenty hours to make the same bookshelf, but it is out of square, out of plumb, is wobbly and has several nail holes in it. According to the labor theory of value, the noob bookshelf is worth more because the laborer took twenty hours to make said shelf, instead of the five hours of the efficient crafter.

Not exactly, because the master woodworker’s prior labor to gain that experience would factor into the value assessment.

OK here's my third refutation of the labor theory of value: you and I both have 1,000 hours of experience making bookshelves. You spend 50 hours making a beautiful bookshelf, and you carve scrollwork into the legs of the shelf and beautiful scrollwork into the front of each shelf, and it is level, square, and plumb. I spend 50 hours making a bookshelf, but it has one leg that is much thinner than the rest, and there is no scrollwork because I don't know how to do that, and I didn't really measure anything, I just kind of eyeballed it, so everything is out of plumb and out of square, and the bookshelf is rickety, at best.

According to the labor theory of value, our bookshelves are worth the same amount, because you put 50 hours into making yours, and I put 50 hours into making mine, and we have the same prior experience.

Heh, this is kinda fun.

Another follow-up question, then: How did you manage to spend 50 hours making it? Did you sit there, painstakingly, making one leg thinner than the rest for some reason? Did you sleep? Did you spend 20 hours of it browsing HN? In either case, this would likely fall under the category of unproductive labor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_and_unproductive_la...

There's also the distinction of "socially-necessary labor", which feels (to me) like Marx's parallel to subjective value - the more socially-necessary, the more valuable the labor (a nice table vs. a crappy one).

In any case, the value is not just a measure of "hours put in" as you're making it out to be here; clearly I put more labor into it than you if mine looks/performs better in the same amount of time.

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