Re: [OPE] peanut butter value-form theory

Alejandro Agafonow wrote:
>
> You try to devise a causal reasoning from the allegedly evidence that
> this research offers, but this evidence is not legtimely because it
> has been reached out of an untenable assumption, i.e. technological
> change has stopped on time X to let you catch up with the gap between
> market prices and labor costs.
>
This is not true. In most estimation procedures you have to deal with
data sampled in time. E.g. when estimating labour values one has to take
a snapshot of the technological state of the economy, encoded in an
input-output matrix. However, when you take several snapshots over time
you find a persistent correlation between prices and labour values and
that a significant part of the change in relative prices can be
predicted on the basis of changes in the labour values which is due to
technical change.

>
>
> This gap is filled in a dynamic theory, which doesn’t require such a
> ceteris paribus clause, with the initiative of entrepreneurs who
> trying to foresee changes on consumers’ preferences, disrupting the
> cost structure of the economy with their marketable-driven inventions.
> This includes inventions originally conceived with other purposes, the
> potential contribution to well-being of which has been discovered by
> entrepreneurs (e.g. Internet).
>

Your last sentence is empirically false which strengthens my belief that
your general theory of the mythical 'entrepreneur'
is not backed by any empirical research on verifiable claims.
>
>
>
> Worth doesn’t mean that resources are commensurable by means of a
> metric. This is just part of a theory of exchange or economic measure.
> There is a more fundamental question: Does labor concede ‘value as
> worth’ to the goods produces out of it?
>
>
>
Your notion of 'worth' is conflating utility with value. Classical and
Marxist political economy certainly thought labour was the basis of
economic value (not utility). There are good theoretical grounds for
this theory, especially for capitalist economies, given by e.g. Shaikh
and Farjoun and Machover.

//Dave Z
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Received on Thu Apr 9 16:14:21 2009