[p2p-research] Fwd: Launch of Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies, preliminary plans

[Christian Siefkes]

Joseph Jackson wrote:
> Thanks, hope to have your involvement in whatever capacity once we get
> started, perhaps for the theory of value issue.  For now, administrative
> details are being discussed at
> http://groups.google.com/group/post-scarcity-agalmics-journal-launch.  
> Thanks for your points on the LTV, I am still struggling to master it. 
> 
> I agree with most of the LTV and by "normative" I meant that the LTV
> provides an objective notion of "fair price" (if price exceeds the
> average cost of production it is a sign that some barrier prevents
> competitors from entering).  

That's true, but if that's your ideal, it's not much different from what
things are now, since in most areas, the barriers of entry are sufficiently
weak to make the actual prices quite similar to the "fair price", as you
call it.

The problem with capitalism isn't that prices are "unfair"--most prices
aren't. There are other problems. First, production only takes place if
there is _profit._ The goal of all capitalist production is to make profit,
i.e. to turn money into more money. So, in order to get the things you need,
you have to convince some capitalist that they need you, i.e. that employing
you allows them to make more profit than they would make otherwise. But
capitalists only need a limited number of personnel, much less than there
are people on Earth, so that's the big hurdle which most people fail to
overcome (when speaking on a global scale).

A second problem is that, as a worker, you don't sell the results of your
labor, you sell your _labor power_ (workers, or would-be workers, are people
who don't have anything to sell than their labor power--most people
haven't). The deal by selling your labor power is: you get paid the value of
your labor power (NOT the value of your labor--labor doesn't _have_ value,
it _produces_ values), and the value of your labor power is what you need in
order to survive (according to your local community standard of living). In
return, you have to give your full labor power (according to the local
standard for the length of they work day/week, say, 8 hours a day/40 hours a
week). If the production of the goods you need for your standard of living
takes 20 hours a week, you still have to work 40 hours--the other 20 hours
are the "surplus"--they go to the capitalist, become their profit and are,
in fact, the only reason why they employed you in the first place.

So the problem isn't unfair prices, it's the fact that people have to sell
their labor power, because they don't have anything else to sell. And this
situation will necessarily arise in a market system (even in a fictitious
scenario where initially everybody had some means to production--inevitable,
some people would go bankrupt and again have only their labor power to sell).

> In contrast, after classical economics was
> abandoned economists have simply said that subjective preference rules
> supreme--price is whatever consumers are willing to pay. (nothing wrong
> whatsoever with charging anything I can for a bottle of water in a
> desert regardless of what it actually cost me to produce and transport
> that good).  The only problem I have with LTV is making labor the most
> important "source" of value.  To me, capitalism would be great if we
> actually had univeral ownership of capital.  Pretty much everybody would
> love to receive income without laboring!  

Capital doesn't not create value, only labor does. Money doesn't turn itself
into more money by itself (you could send a dollar to the moon and leave it
there for 100 years to find out whether money can multiply by itself).

Rather, capital only allows to get "income without laboring" because it
gives you the means to employ other people's work. It's their surplus labor
which pays your income.

> I find the theory of Binary
> Economics interesting in this respect because it emphasizes the ever
> increasing power of technology to actually "do work."  If we instead
> emphasize the role of technology as primary it leads to new
> perspectives.  What happens with the advent of true personal
> manufacturing?  There is no more average price when everything is a
> custom order.  Do we have one theory of value for standardized
> commodities and another for custom goods?  I don't have answers to any
> of this now, I'm just not sure the classical LTV can function for these
> situations. 

LTV is only meant to work for situations where people trade their work, or
the results of their work. If everybody had a personal manufacturing device
catering for all her/his needs, trade would no longer be necessary, and
value would no longer exist. That's a rather fancy scenario, but their are
other, more realistic scenarios that make value, and trading, superfluous.
For example, when people employ commons-based peer production
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production> to jointly
produce what they need, so they don't have to trade and sell their labor
power. I've written about that in my book, "From Exchange to Contributions"
<http://peerconomy.org/wiki/Main_Page>.

Best regards
	Christian

-- 
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian at siefkes.net ---------
|   Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/   |   Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
|   Better Bayesian Analysis:           |   Peer Production Everywhere:
|   http://bart-project.com/            |   http://peerconomy.org/wiki/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

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