From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Oct 26 2004 - 06:54:54 EDT
I agree with the thrust of your reply. Both on the ambiguities of the Marx/Sraffa equations with regards to the difference between stocks and flows and on the sense of treating waste simply as a production cost. Clearly there would be other forms of analysis for which keeping track of the waste produced may be more important - for instance the process of disposal of atomic waste is a very long term production process and thus has rate of profit implications. -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Philip Dunn Sent: 26 October 2004 11:29 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: Re: (OPE-L) Re: Negative values in pure joint production Hi Paul At 13:16 25/10/2004 +0100, Paul wrote: > > >-----Original Message----- >Phil >---- > >The problem is important because negative values are bad news. It is >challenging because the problem is impossible to solve in a physical >quantities input output framework. >------------------------ > > >Why is this a problem. We all know that negative values >do exist in joint production, without them there would be no market for >waste disposal firms. > >Capitalism can survive this provided that the negative >value of the waste products is low enough relative >to the main products. > In the physical quantities framework waste does appear to be output, possibly with a negative price if the producer has to pay to get it taken away. The Great Circular Flow of Torrens, Malthus, Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa treats everything present at the start of a production period as input and everything present at the end, just before sales, as output. There is no real separation of stocks and flows. The gross product includes waste, unused stocks, old machines, partially completed products etc as well as what gets sold. The alternative is to define the gross product as the flow of commodities actually sold. From this perspective waste is not a negatively priced output but a positive input cost. The firm pays for waste disposal services. That this cost is incurred after production does not matter. It just means that the value of the waste disposal service is transferred to the product before the service is paid for, generating a negative stock. Phil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Oct 27 2004 - 00:00:01 EDT