Originally posted by Blakemore
What is the point?
That the cost of a product is based on someone voluntarily trading money from it, not how much labor went into it.
Maybe try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
Originally posted by Blakemore
Money has no value other than the tacit consent, so I agree with you, if that's your argument.
You're describing Fiat currency, not money. Money used to be backed by gold, until fdr made private ownership of gold illegal and forced everyone to give their gold to the government.
Originally posted by Blakemore
Yeah but you can't eat gold. :/
Think of a car. When you own a car your ownership is represented by a title.
Gold is analogous to the car, in this example, and money is a title representing ownership of a proportional amount of gold.
Money, Fiat or not, is the thing most sought after and traded for.
In prison this often turns out to be smokes or blocks of ramen(which you can eat)
Originally posted by ilikecomics
It's not based on labor whatsoever, outside of cost calculation, it has to do with the subjective valuation made by each and every individual consumer.
Yeah, what you are talking about is a simplified version of the price finding mechanism of the supply and demand curve. Which is a valid and useful approach. It’s not incompatible with aspects of the Labour Theory of value either though. The question that it tries to answer is rather were value comes from in the transformation process from a raw material to a commodity, and there’s mainly two possibilities, capital or labour (it is a bit more complicated than that, but for simplicity sake). And what the Labour Theory says is that the Labour put into that process is what creates the transformative value.
Of course in Marxist thought there are a lot more complications then, like the use value vs. the trade value of a commodity. Or also one that is relevant to the supply and demand side, basically the question of what goes into the cost calculation of the supply side, but that’s really irrelevant for this topic.
Originally posted by ilikecomics
This should help you
It would probably be better to also read some sources that believe the Labour theory of value and make the strongest case for it they can. The Mises institute is of course deeply opposed to it, and will really more fight a straw man to imply it’s superiority. If you want to get a strong well argued case for some aspect of Laisser-faire capitalism, the Mises institute would be a great source, but this way it’s a bit like asking a turkey why thanksgiving is not a good holiday, the turkey will say whatever it can, regardless of facts or logic.
Originally posted by Blakemore
But value comes from what you can do with it. I can't put gold in my car, a battery, eat it, etc
You are right, fiat currency and gold backed currency and gold itself are pretty similar in most ways, they all rely on real power and real faith to have any worth. The advantage that some think gold has is its scarcity, which means that a government that limits itself to gold in some way has fewer economic options on the table, which proponents of more “free” markets often like.
Originally posted by ilikecomics
@artolCompletely agree. I am an anarchist and come from that pov, I am biased, but I've yet to see a compelling argument for the labor theory of value. If you have an essay or article or something, Id love to read it.
If you are really interested you could just read Marx’s Capital Volume 1, he lays out his argument pretty well, in my opinion. Alternatively I suppose some scholarly reading discussing it by someone who is a proponent would be useful as well, but I do not have one on hand I could recommend.