Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

No, he doesn't.

Being an anarcho-capitalist, I am very familiar with the concepts on which that @Longshot is educating you. Also, I know in the common economic lexicon, intrinsic value can have several meanings but usually pertains to estimating a company's perceived value. This may be where you are conflating terminology.

However, you are probably attempting to make a point regarding the intrinsic theory of value from which labor theory of value is derived.

Complete bunk, btw, but I'll let @Longshot continue to break it down for you.

 

No.

Intrinsic value (as I'm employing the concept) must mean something more than "usefulness or utility", since (in my estimation) money is also 'useful' yet has no intrinsic value. That's why I have settled on "life-promoting" as a descriptor of 'intrinsic value'. (Note: a community could manage an economy, without using money at all).

ie, the price of a gallon of water (….or a gallon of beer)?

I think our disagreement arises because I reject classical economics which holds that value is determined ONLY by the price that can be achieved in a market place.

That's why I see a role - outside of the market - for public sector money creation in the economy, alongside the present mode of money creation in private banks to service the private sector.

Addressed above; we are using different concepts of value, yours being determined the market.

You an MMT'er now?

It has taken us a long time to get there...except the government CANNOT spend "all the money it's little heart desires" (to spend) - the government is constrained by availability of resources and labour.

 

Not really. I'm talking about the degree of value a person places on a particular thing. Everyone values things differently. That's what I mean when I say that value is subjective.

Value is determined by the person doing the valuing.

Nope. I have said several times that value is subjective. Everyone have different preferences and values different things differently.

Even Robinson Crusoe subjectively values things, despite the lack of a market on his island.

Acknowledging that government can print as much money as it wants to makes on an MMT'er?

Okay. We are are so constrained.

 

Trade proves it can't be subjective: it takes more than one person.

Blatant equivocation fallacy. That is utility, not value. Value is what a thing would trade for.

Nope. Because an apple trades for a pear, their value is equal. That is the market's judgment.

 

No we aren't because you still refuse to know facts.

Already refuted. You are committing a simple and obvious equivocation fallacy. Utility -- the capacity to satisfy human desires -- is not value (what a thing would trade for) in the relevant sense.

 

If their value is equal why would I trade and apple for a pear. I'm no better off than before, and I just wasted a lot of time?

 

How much I value something is independent of trade. If I were alone on a desert isle I would still value some things more than others.

We all value things differently. That's why economists say that value is subjective.

 

OK ..but value is subjective for the individual, NOT for the market. Your Anarchism - with its primacy of the individual doctrine - is leading you astray from the real world.

And further, unlike classical economists, I reject the market's valuation of goods and services as the sole determinant of value; I include a social (life-enhancing) factor (in valuation/pricing). I can do that because resources, not money, are the constraints to economic activity (which you seem to recognise).

.

Again, your Anarchism is leading you astray; Crusoe could value subjectively because he was the only person on the island (and consequently there was no market).

The same mistake Anarchists make when they propose individual liberty as the sine qua non for social organisation, but complete individual liberty is only possible if there is not more than one person in the world.

Well....acknowledging that a currency-issuing government is constrained by resources, not money, is MMT.

So, time to get behind Bernie Sanders who can authorise the central bank (Fed) to pay off all that student debt, and fund single payer healthcare, since obviously all the necessary resources exist to realise those goals, immediately

 

Only individuals have the capacity to value things. The market is not a sentient being, therefore it can't value anything. And all individuals value things differently.

 

No, the market does that; ask any classical economist.

Your lack of knowledge of classical economics is beginning to show.

The market is the aggregate of all individuals in it …..described as the "invisible hand" in classical economics.

See above.
Just repeating that over and over wont save you, in this debate.

 

And it is these individuals who value things. Only individuals can value things.

Just tell me what, other than an individual, can value something.

 

Your idea of "market" is an abstraction.
It can't think, it can't decide, it can't act.
The "market" is merely the summation of billions if individuals' subjective thoughts and resultant actions.

New math:
10 subjectives = objective ?
Funny

 

Study classical economics - the market clearing process - conducted between sellers and buyers - determines the realised value/price in a free market. Hence the "invisible hand" concept.
One individual seller or buyer cannot determine value (market price). Try taking a load of apples to a market (as a seller), and asking a for a price higher than the buyers in the market are prepared to pay. you will be disappointed.

In the meantime, classical economists would not be concerned with this little debate we were having about intrinsic (life enhancing) value, versus subjective value, because, like you, they simply don't recognise my concept of intrinsic value as determined eg, in the public welfare sector; whereas unlike you, they know prices in free markets are determined by a market clearing process which engages all the sellers and buyers in the market.

 

Yes, the market represents the collections actions of individuals. And these buying and selling actions are driven by what they value. Only people value things. Things don't "have" value.

 

I think you mean the "collective, or aggregate actions" of individuals. (I recall a similar incident a while back when you contradicted yourself... and never attempted or were unable to defend the contradiction.

I hope you are fully prepared to take your apples back home, if you are not prepared to meet the price the market will pay.

 

Yes, that was a type. Collective actions of individuals. Only individuals can value things.

Contradict myself? I don't know about that.

Which market? You know many markets exist. The wholesale market, the retail market, and many niche markets.

But to return to my initial point. Only individuals can value things, and how each individual values things is different. For instance I could value apple more than I value pears, while you might value pears more than you value apples. That is what makes us trading apples for pears mutually beneficial.

 

So the summation of billions of subjective valuations equals an objective evaluation?
Is this schizophrenia day?

You do realize that the "market" is an abstraction in classical economics?

 

He thinks the invisible hand is a real, breathing, thinking entity.

 

He certainly is mistaking an economic model for reality.

 

"I am arguing for societal prohibitions against the initiation of violence against my neighbour". (in the problem of capitalism thread)…..."societal prohibitions"......requiring rule of law.....

The market as conceived in classical economics, which includes ALL of the above.

As in a barter system, achieved by voluntary agreement. That has nothing to do with market value, in classical economics.

 

Where's the contradiction?

So you're arguing in support of classical economics? I thought you were an MMT'er.

You understand that the term market is a model? An abstraction? There is no such actual physical entity as a market. You know this, right?

Are you referring to price?

 

Indeed much of classical economics, on which our present neoliberal free market economic system (ie Friedman Chicago school beloved by Reagan and Thatcher) is an abstraction, that has a shaky relation to the real world.

But I now see why you and longshot are stumbling here:
you are confusing macroeconomics (which in classical economics describes price setting in markets, with micro economics, in which individuals have their own subjective 'vaulations'.

(Hence you comment on "schizophrenia"...…)

No; in classical macroeconomics, the invisible hand (in free markets), is price setting/valuation mechanism, involving supply and demand.

But I see neither of you are commenting on the MMT concept of value determined, not only by markets (or by individuals), but by considerations of public welfare.

 

You were arguing for voluntary agreement as the basis for relations between individuals. Rule of law adjudicates relations between individuals.

No, I've already made that clear (which you ignored):

"In the meantime, classical economists would not be concerned with this little debate we were having about intrinsic (life enhancing) value, versus subjective value, because, like you, they simply don't recognise my concept of intrinsic value as determined eg, in the public welfare sector; whereas unlike you, they know (conceptualise) prices in free markets are determined by a market clearing process which engages all the sellers and buyers in the market."

Already clarified, most recently in post #547.

 

Yeah, leave that in the hands of the people who have the the ability to exploit that for great personal power and wealth, by government edict.
Are you freakin kidding me?

 

Markets are the summation of individual subjective decisions. They cannot be separated.

But hey, they taught the concepts in separate courses, from separate texts, sequentially, so they must be different