From: Michael Williams (michaelj.williams@TISCALI.CO.UK)
Date: Sat Jun 19 2004 - 16:42:50 EDT
> -----Original Message----- > From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Paul C > Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 8:44 PM > To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU > Subject: Re: measurement of abstract labor > > > Ian Wright wrote: > > > > > > >The low price does mean that some of your labour-time is > >retrospectively counted as less than socially necessary. You wasted > >some time. But the value of the commodity does not change. > > > >I can take the socially necessary amount of time to produce a > >particular commodity but if no-one wants to buy it then my > labour was > >socially unnecessary. Is there something wrong with this? > > > > > > Just that the language involves a loss of information. To > distinct causes are categorised the same way. Since it is > possible in principle to distinguish them perhaps we should > have different terms for the two situations. > > As an information processing system, the price mechanism can > not distinguish these causes, it is too low a bandwidth > channel. But theoretically we should have some terminology to > distinguish them. Is not this issue very close to the neo-classical econometric identification problem as between supply and demand curves, with the former as derived from efficient cost curves? michael
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