It's always so strange to see one of these articles that endlessly seeks to philosophize modern political/economic circumstances but never directly reference labor theory/the alienation of man from his labor. I wonder if people are simply unaware of the large existing body of work on these issues or are just trying to use "politically neutral" language to describe the explicitly radical study on our existing structures of power and how individuals spend their time
There's that. What stood out to me was the philosophizing over how transactions won't fix the widespread outbreak of ennui/existential crises, but the audience here is tilted towards programmers who likely must advance this proliferation of XaaS, even if it is out of personal fiscal necessity. The political/economic circumstances would lead to this end, where the economic nibbles away at private spheres of life and everyone can sense something undesirable happening but cannot fight shadows.
He's quoting Adam Savage, famous from his time with MythBusters. Adam (the entire team really) had a way of making interesting things happen no matter which direction their investigation took.
That's the case for pretty much all theories attempting to model something as famously nebulous and poorly-defined as human society. In light of that limitation, labor theory provides one of the less-wildly-inaccurate models; the issues with it are more around people claiming to champion it while simultaneously imagining themselves as part of some privileged intelligentsia, the very existence of which is indistinguishable from the very thing labor theory directly challenges/criticizes.
The labor theory (and broader theories incorporating it) also posits that "price" and "value" are independent. That, combined with the position that value is a function of the labor to produce a good or service, is correct; people can and routinely do pay more or less for a good or service than what it's worth - that difference being dependent on the negotiating power of the buyer v. the seller, any transportation/delivery costs, and myriad other factors that have nothing to do with the actual good or service in question - and the employer/employee relationship is no exception.
> value is a function of the labor to produce a good or service, is correct
That appears plainly wrong. Take any rare good where demand for the good exceeds supply - per my original example of silk.
More people want silk than there is supply of silk. The value of silk has nothing to do with it's labor cost. Even if tomorrow the labor of silk was entirely automated, silk would still be expensive.
Nor is this some kind of break of negotiating power. There is no seller/buyer relationship which changes the scarce nature of silk and thus can decrease it's value.
> More people want silk than there is supply of silk. The value of silk has nothing to do with it's labor cost.
Sure, but it has everything to do with the labor value - because again, cost and value are not necessarily the same thing. If more people want silk than there is supply of silk, then that increases the value of the silk itself and in turn increases the value of the labor to produce said silk.
This effect really shouldn't be that unintuitive. If more people want programmers than there is a supply of programmers, then obviously this would raise the value of programmer labor, no? Why would this be any different for a product of said labor?
> There is no seller/buyer relationship which changes the scarce nature of silk and thus can decrease it's value.
Sure there is. Do you think that wholesale and retail prices are always identical?
There's a reason I'm picking silk. As a hint, palladium and tritium would also be good picks.
> If more people want silk than there is supply of silk, then that increases the value of the silk itself and in turn increases the value of the labor to produce said silk.
Tomorrow, a famous tik toker posts about how awesome making silk is. Hundreds of thousands of young adults decide to work in the silk industry - and are in fact hired.
The price of silk does not move. Not one inch.
Even though the labor pool has expanded (silk production is not a difficult skill) the cost has not moved - yet the labor value of silk has crashed! Our young adults make terrible wages!
> Why would this be any different for a product of said labor?
Not all products behave like software or agile consulting. There is more or less infinite software. There is a fixed cap of most other things.
> Do you think that wholesale and retail prices are always identical?
Tomorrow you go to a silk seller and ask to buy silk.
The silk seller tells you it will be $40 a yard.
You laugh and tell the silk seller that no no, you aren't making a garment. You want to buy many warehouses of silk.
The silk seller returns your laugh. "That will be $40 a yard still."
You get frustrated and tell the silk seller you will buy ALL of his inventory. Metric tons if needed.
The silk seller replies there is not that much silk in the world, but what he has will still be $40 a yard. Maybe next year he can give you some more.
Your entire argument seems to hinge on silk (or palladium, or tritium) being uniform in price. In silk's case that's demonstrably false: https://www.thepricer.org/silk-fabric-cost/
Comparing to precious metals, on that note, is folly; there's a fixed amount of said precious metals on Earth, whereas one can always breed more silkworms and plant more mulberry trees to feed them. That is: the supply of palladium and tritium is inelastic, while the supply of silk is elastic. Put simply:
> There is a fixed cap of most other things.
And silk is not among them.
Regardless of that elasticity of supply: if Wal-Mart buys silk from your silk-seller at $40/yard, do you think Wal-Mart is inclined to resell it at $40/yard? A 0% profit margin leaves Wal-Mart with zero reason to buy and resell silk; either Wal-Mart has to raise the retail price or has to negotiate for a lower wholesale price.
(This is, mind you, assuming Wal-Mart has precisely zero costs w.r.t. inventory management and retail sales; in practice, buying silk for $40/yard and reselling it for $40/yard would represent a loss)
As a result...
> The silk seller returns your laugh. "That will be $40 a yard still."
...and Wal-Mart laughs back, saying "aight we'll go to your competitor". Your silk seller's competitor hired a bunch of those TikTok-inspired young adults to raise silkworms and harvest/sort/boil/defloss/reel/twist/dye/weave their silk, such that labor costs drop by $5 per yard. As a consequence...
> The price of silk does not move. Not one inch.
...said competitor responds to Wal-Mart with "sure, we can do $35/yard", thus securing a hefty chunk of revenue while letting Wal-Mart handle all the intricacies of retail sale. Your silk seller now bears the opportunity cost of refusing to differentiate between wholesale and retail prices. Sure, this particular silkmonger could sell direct to consumers, making him a competitor of both the other silk seller and Wal-Mart... but now he's bearing the costs of silk selling itself and the costs of pursuing a bunch of individual retail customers, and very likely doing the latter far less efficiently than Wal-Mart due to the vast differences in economies of scale.
> reference labor theory/the alienation of man from his labor. I wonder if people are simply unaware of the large existing body of work on these issues
I’ve been interested in reading more about this. Do you have any pointers to good info?
One man’s explanation of human behavior isn’t an objective reading of reality, that’s why it’s known as a theory. It’s possible other people, like me, are very familiar with Marxist theory and choose to reject it on a variety of grounds. Referencing one philosopher and noting that it’s strange others don’t agree with them is sort of funny - one could bring up Kant or Martin Luther or Rand or any other influential thinker using the exact same framing.
I don't think it's strange at all. After the fall of the USSR and the revelations of its horrors all but the most radical in the west came to consider Marxism as a dead letter philosophy.
One ought to believe what they believe to be right, even if it is radical, but you shouldn't be shocked when others don't join in your radicalism with you.
While I understand why someone may think that (just because Marx is important on both topics), they are not much related at all. The Capital is something on it's own, and Marx has the best explanation about capitalism so far.
It’s hard to separate Marxism from the USSR in the same way it’s difficult to separate facism from Nazi Germany, I think. I don’t see how one can reasonably separate a predominant ideology from the empire that popularized it.
That makes more sense if you are talking about Leninism than Marxism (yes, I know Leninism markets itself as Marxism-Leninism, but, its quite easily to distinguish Leninism from non-Leninist Marxism.
> in the same way it’s difficult to separate facism from Nazi Germany
I mean, Naziism is a lot closer to the original Fascism (that of Mussolini’s Italy) than thr USSR is to original Marxism, but it is still pretty easy to distinguish the features of either fascism in the broad sense or Italian Fascism in the narrow sense from the distinct features of German Naziism.
> I don’t see how one can reasonably separate a predominant ideology from the empire that popularized it.
Marxism was a significant global force about which regimes were concerned well before Lenin made a radical alteration to make it seem relevant to societies that had not yet acheived well-developed capitalism.
