Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

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> I would be lying if I said I wasn't leading you somewhere

You're leading me nowhere because you aren't actually saying anything at all. Try actually answering questions if you want to lead someone somewhere.

> How do you define "value"?

At a basic level, usefulness.

> Is labor worth anything?

Yes, I value (it is useful to me) being able to leave my house without everything being overgrown. I value (it is useful to me) having the yard not overgrown to the point wildlife take over my yard and invade my home. I value (it is useful to me) to not have the trees overgrow above my roof and eventually lose limbs on to my roof. The way I achieve these useful things is by labor. So the labor is useful, it has value.

> How do you find out?

I look at the usefulness of that labor. What would it cost for me to hire exterminators once rats and snakes and bugs take over the yard and then my house? What would I have to trade for a doctor to heal me once I get sick from the rodent infestation? How would I repair my home after the damage from the infestations? What does a new roof cost if I don't maintain my trees? How much do I have to work to ensure these things don't happen? Then finally, given the fact I only have 24 hours in a day and I have other wants, is it useful to me to exchange something with someone else (something they find use of) to do it for me.

But going back to "is past labor less valuable than current labor", well, today do I care more about the lawn being mowed and the trees trimmed properly or do I just value that I did it six weeks ago and that's good enough for me now? In the end, today the trees are overgrown. The lawn is getting tall. Rats are starting to live in the bushes. I need to get out there now, despite the fact I did it six weeks ago. The value of that work I did then is now less, because the realities of the world continued changing.

A baker baked a loaf of bread a month ago. Is that labor still worth something today? Is that labor worth the same, more, or less than if he baked a loaf of bread today?

Try answering any of these questions next.

You're assuming your questions are even answerable in the context you're providing.

We fundamentally do not agree on definitions. "Is useful to me" is subjective.

> "Is useful to me" is subjective.

Value is subjective.

Allegedly a barrel of WTI crude is worth $76 today. I can go look up that price, and theoretically lots of people out there would trade at that price. If someone just dropped off a barrel of oil to my driveway, I wouldn't agree it is worth $76. It has no usefulness to me. I'd have to work (labor!) to move it off my lot someplace else. I'd have to find someone willing to take it and they'll probably want to buy it at a discount. Chances are, the value of a barrel of crude at my house is negative, not positive $76. Why is it worth negative to me while its worth $76 to others? Simple, its usefulness to those people. Those people buying it at $76 have the connections to trade it to the refiners. Those refiners have the knowledge and tools to turn it into other things more people find useful. And finally, I'll find use from it and buy something made or protected by the plastics or use the energy from the gasoline or diesel they get from it.

But how can that be? You're suggesting value isn't something subjective!

Lead me places buddy. Tell me your definition of value then. Explain to me how value isn't something subjective.

> You're assuming your questions are even answerable in the context you're providing.

Most would see it as a very simple answer. A baker wants $1 for him baking a loaf of bread. Would you pay him the same, more, or less today for his baking labor a week ago compared to the labor he just did five minutes ago? This shouldn't be a challenging question, most probably know which loaf they want.

I would want today's bread, but I don't think this is really the same as your first mowing comment. If I bought bread today, I would expect the cost of bread I buy next week to be the same. If costs remain constant, it should be so, but that's unlikely, as price is the consensus of "what people are willing to pay" vs "the difficulty in providing the item"

> Lead me places buddy.

If, let's say, this baker was to create a new oven, that somehow magically, did not radiate heat, and so the input energy was DIRECTLY put into baking the bread. They, would be able to lower the cost to the consumer as they had less energy costs? They would be able, to make their process more efficient, by being less wasteful. (You could apply this to a new internal combustion engine too for instance.)

The bread does not become more valuable, but the difficulty to provide it has been lessened, because of entropy minimization.

Value, I believe, is a product of thermodynamics. Things are useful, because they allow you to be more efficient, and use less energy.

There's so much to unpack on your first paragraph. You would expect the cost to remain constant even though you then understand its unlikely. I would expect I should be able to fly if I jump off my roof, but that's unlikely. Its almost like the values change because of some amount of subjectivity to them...hmm..nah can't be, it's the laws of thermodynamics that set prices and determine values!

> I would want today's bread

So right there we see a difference in the value of what was produced a week ago to what was produced today. If the value of his labor was constant, why wouldn't you value his work put into that loaf the same? Shouldn't the two loaves be similar? Ah, maybe because the world continued on so the fact he made bread a week ago doesn't matter as much anymore, as if it's not as useful or valuable anymore. Hmm...

> I don't think this is really the same as your first mowing comment

It is precisely the same. Sure, the day it was mowed it was worth the same to me as a freshly mowed lawn today. But the usefulness of my mowing became less over time because the lawn and the trees continue to grow. I need to keep doing it.

The baker can't just bake all the bread a week ago and expect people still value it the same. The world marches on, the bread goes stale and moldy, the yard keeps growing.

But someone labors and makes a more durable good, and that labor (usually) holds its value a good bit longer. Not forever though, as that washing machine or car will also rust away and become less useful over time.

In the end though, everything we do will eventually be worth nothing. Everything you make will fall apart, everything you write will be forgotten.

> price is the consensus of "what people are willing to pay" vs "the difficulty in providing the item"

It's almost like you're describing usefulness here. How useful is it to the people buying it versus how laborious it was to make it. Funny how that usefulness metric still shows up here.

> Value, I believe, is a product of thermodynamics. Things are useful, because they allow you to be more efficient, and use less energy.

This does nothing to explain why that barrel of crude is worth negative dollars to me while its worth positive dollars to others. If it is some product of the laws of thermodynamics that make a barrel of crude worth $76, why do the laws of thermodynamics behave differently around me than some commodities trader? Or maybe this whole "iTs thErMoDynAmicS" is just fluff around "things have value because they're useful"?

It also fails to explain why you value that loaf of bread today more than the loaf of bread from a week ago. The energy cost for that loaf was the same. If it all boils down to energy, should the bread be the same price? Don't they have the same value? Why are you being so subjective about your valuation of the two loaves of bread?

I mean, your last sentence essentially points out that "product of thermodynamics" ends up being just a measure of usefulness...so...one could just say value is a subjective measure of usefulness?

And even then you argue things have value because they make me more efficient. So how does this explain the "value" of a rare baseball card or a fancy work of art? Does taking a vacation really make me more efficient? Maybe I just really like the color red, so I spend more on a red car that looks cool, it was more valuable to me, but did that make me more efficient? I like cinnamon raisin bread and sometimes pay a premium for it, did that somehow make me more efficient? No, but it's useful to me because I subjectively derive happiness from these things.

Some people hate raisin bread, and to them that loaf is worth less than a regular loaf of wheat or whatever. Or if I'm making a ham sandwich, I don't think I'd normally want to use raisin bread for that, so I wouldn't generally put a higher value on regular bread over raisin bread in that case. It's not anything about efficiency, it's about subjective measures of usefulness.

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