- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Coaching Changes
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Started By
Message
1
Posted on 12/4/25 at 3:52 pm to Lsupimp
quote:
You don’t think that when you make a decision to go the the spa that you don’t have decision -logic based on economic efficiency?
I know for certain I do not. I typically prioritize luxury over everything else. It's different than purchasing milk. Even so, I had to run out to buy a gallon of milk last night. It was like 8:00 and dark so I wanted to go somewhere close. There were 3 options within a mile of my house and I chose to go to the family-owned grocery over the corporate store and the store that the guy who got Latoya elected owns. Efficiency didn't have anything to do with that choice.
A lot of economics might just be based on the whims of humans at any given moment.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 3:52 pm to 4cubbies
Economics is not the decisions being made but trying to understand WHY the decisions are made. Do we trust individuals or central planners? Do individuals make rational decisions for themselves or irrational ones? Are central planners smart or dumb?
The reality is nuanced. Central planning can reduce some inefficiencies (like redundant infrastructure), but it can also cause massive inefficiencies. Central planning often has number-itis. Number-itis is when a large organization (often a government, but often corporations as well) declares a certain statistic as its benchmark for determining success/failure of a given endeavor. The central planner then chases maximizing that number because that number determines whether or not they have a job. Often, models used to understand economic data fail to account for all of the factors that go into that number, or the data itself can be manipulated to falsely prop up the number. Overall prosperity or efficiency can start to dwindle despite the metric they're looking for going up.
A great example of this phenomenon is "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top". These endeavors by the federal government sought to improve educational attainment by citizens by creating a framework for evaluating school performance and incentivizing improvements. They were chasing GPA's, standardized test scores, graduation rates, percentages of kids enrolling in college, drop out rates, disciplinary actions, etc.
Over time, schools learned how to game the metrics to show improvements to qualify for more funding or avoid losing access to those funds. They learned not to suspend kids who were disruptive in class because it hurt their rankings. They would "socially promote" failing students so they wouldn't be counted as "drop outs". They began inflating GPA's to help students get into college and increase graduation rates. On paper, it looked like the plans were working, but evaluation after evaluation showed that actual abilities to read and do basic math were massively declining. By prioritizing metrics, it didn't actually improve education, it just changed the focus. Long term, it HURT educational outcomes, but because their pay was based on a different metric, that was all that mattered.
Such is a frequent problem in economics. What metric are you chasing: Inflation, unemployment, GDP, GDP/capita, purchasing power parity, trade imbalance, median income, etc. Are you looking for 5 year period, 10 year, 40 year rates of return? What is success? Can you even trust the numbers you get? How are they quantified? Who is quantifying them? Have their metrics changed from the past? Are they even apples to apples numbers?
The reality is nuanced. Central planning can reduce some inefficiencies (like redundant infrastructure), but it can also cause massive inefficiencies. Central planning often has number-itis. Number-itis is when a large organization (often a government, but often corporations as well) declares a certain statistic as its benchmark for determining success/failure of a given endeavor. The central planner then chases maximizing that number because that number determines whether or not they have a job. Often, models used to understand economic data fail to account for all of the factors that go into that number, or the data itself can be manipulated to falsely prop up the number. Overall prosperity or efficiency can start to dwindle despite the metric they're looking for going up.
A great example of this phenomenon is "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top". These endeavors by the federal government sought to improve educational attainment by citizens by creating a framework for evaluating school performance and incentivizing improvements. They were chasing GPA's, standardized test scores, graduation rates, percentages of kids enrolling in college, drop out rates, disciplinary actions, etc.
Over time, schools learned how to game the metrics to show improvements to qualify for more funding or avoid losing access to those funds. They learned not to suspend kids who were disruptive in class because it hurt their rankings. They would "socially promote" failing students so they wouldn't be counted as "drop outs". They began inflating GPA's to help students get into college and increase graduation rates. On paper, it looked like the plans were working, but evaluation after evaluation showed that actual abilities to read and do basic math were massively declining. By prioritizing metrics, it didn't actually improve education, it just changed the focus. Long term, it HURT educational outcomes, but because their pay was based on a different metric, that was all that mattered.
Such is a frequent problem in economics. What metric are you chasing: Inflation, unemployment, GDP, GDP/capita, purchasing power parity, trade imbalance, median income, etc. Are you looking for 5 year period, 10 year, 40 year rates of return? What is success? Can you even trust the numbers you get? How are they quantified? Who is quantifying them? Have their metrics changed from the past? Are they even apples to apples numbers?
This post was edited on 12/4/25 at 3:58 pm
Posted on 12/4/25 at 3:57 pm to kingbob
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Isn’t that basically the engine of the infinite growth model in capitalism? Quarterly earnings, stock valuations, enrollment numbers, productivity metrics, clicks, engagement time, efficiency ratios, GDP targets. Corporations and markets chase the number because the number determines survival.
I’m not disagreeing with your central planning critique. I’m saying the same dynamic exists in market systems. Both rely heavily on abstract metrics and both can distort real world outcomes when those metrics become the goal instead of a tool.
Which brings me back to my original question. If both systems can be captured by “number-itis”, then what exactly makes LTV obsolete today? Is the problem with the theory itself or with the way modern economies (planned or market-based) translate human activity into measurable, tradable units?
quote:
Number-itis is when a large organization declares a certain statistic as its benchmark for success and then chases maximizing that number.
Isn’t that basically the engine of the infinite growth model in capitalism? Quarterly earnings, stock valuations, enrollment numbers, productivity metrics, clicks, engagement time, efficiency ratios, GDP targets. Corporations and markets chase the number because the number determines survival.
I’m not disagreeing with your central planning critique. I’m saying the same dynamic exists in market systems. Both rely heavily on abstract metrics and both can distort real world outcomes when those metrics become the goal instead of a tool.
Which brings me back to my original question. If both systems can be captured by “number-itis”, then what exactly makes LTV obsolete today? Is the problem with the theory itself or with the way modern economies (planned or market-based) translate human activity into measurable, tradable units?
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:02 pm to 4cubbies
No , you are not understanding the usage of the word efficiency. I’ll explain. You are explaining time and money for rest, therapy, rejuvenation.If your happiness, health or productivity improve enough to outweigh the cost, that’s efficient.
You also might have an experience that isn’t worth the money and you might look for a different spa. Or you might look for a substitute like maybe meditation or a home spa or a massage gun or chair. The point is you are constantly making decisions about what you want and whether the bang is worth the buck. And only YOU can decide efficiently what is the appropriate amount of time and money to spend on a thing.
And of course the spa has to make decisions on economy of scale , service bundling, hours of operation, employees needed, employee cross training etc. it’s endless. Trillions of decisions per day.
You also might have an experience that isn’t worth the money and you might look for a different spa. Or you might look for a substitute like maybe meditation or a home spa or a massage gun or chair. The point is you are constantly making decisions about what you want and whether the bang is worth the buck. And only YOU can decide efficiently what is the appropriate amount of time and money to spend on a thing.
And of course the spa has to make decisions on economy of scale , service bundling, hours of operation, employees needed, employee cross training etc. it’s endless. Trillions of decisions per day.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:11 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
Efficiency didn't have anything to do with that choice.
I missed this . Efficiency has EVERYTHING to do with your choice. You were specifically efficient. You maximized total value, not just saved time or money. YOU made the calculation. Because you know the best use of your time and money, not me or your neighbor or a government employee. Supporting a nearby family store also gave you moral satisfaction ( you must be related to my GF ) and convenience and safety in one trip,- which is what economists call SUBJECTIVE ( you are the one who knows) UTILITY EFFICIENCY. In Cubby terms- efficiency measured not only in cost but efficiency measured in well being.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:12 pm to Willie Stroker
quote:
Willie Stroker
oh hey! I missed your response earlier.
quote:
Does she define exploitation?
Over the course of too many pages, yes. It can be summed up as the transfer of the results of one social group’s labor to benefit another.
Although this definition of exploitation is grounded in the Labor Theory of Value, rather than the dominant subjective theory of value used in neoclassical economics, Young chooses this foundation very intentionally. The Labor Theory of Value offers a way to understand exploitation as an objective, structural process where surplus value is transferred from one group to another, not just as an unequal or unfair exchange between individuals.
I lifted those sentences directly from my paper.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:13 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
So my question remains:
Is LTV still analytically useful in 2025 even if it cannot explain most modern forms of value creation?
It was never applicable. I think that's what a lot of us are trying to say. The premise itself, that it ever did anything to explain how economies work, is flawed.
"Exploitation" is subjective too. I don't know how you ever find a proper defined metric that can account for that.
If the person voluntarily decides to work for an agreed upon wage, is that exploitation? I've never really read her stuff, but I have a hunch she's for minimum wage laws.
Eta: just saw your post. She still depending on excess value of labor to help define exploitation. It just doesn't make any sense.
This post was edited on 12/4/25 at 4:15 pm
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:17 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
I'm dictating this post to another illegal who is transcribing it for me btw.
tell them we said get fricked and self deport.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:21 pm to Lsupimp
I get the point you’re making, but if “efficiency” simply means “whatever I chose,” then the word loses any analytical meaning. It becomes circular. Anything can be reinterpreted as utility maximization after the fact.
My decision to choose the family-owned store wasn’t an economic calculus in the way economists usually mean it. It was just a preference based on convenience, morality, and the fact that I didn’t want to give my money to the guy who got Latoya elected. That’s not efficiency. That’s just me being a human making a human decision in a human moment.
If economists wants to call every impulse-driven or value-driven choice “efficiency,” then economics is just relabeling human whims as rational behavior. That’s a retroactive justification more than it's a description of decision logic.
And that was my point in the first place. A lot of economics is built on assumptions about how people should behave, not how we actually do behave.
My decision to choose the family-owned store wasn’t an economic calculus in the way economists usually mean it. It was just a preference based on convenience, morality, and the fact that I didn’t want to give my money to the guy who got Latoya elected. That’s not efficiency. That’s just me being a human making a human decision in a human moment.
If economists wants to call every impulse-driven or value-driven choice “efficiency,” then economics is just relabeling human whims as rational behavior. That’s a retroactive justification more than it's a description of decision logic.
And that was my point in the first place. A lot of economics is built on assumptions about how people should behave, not how we actually do behave.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:25 pm to stuntman
I think you’re conflating two different meanings of exploitation.
Young isn’t talking about exploitation as “someone feels mistreated” or “someone chooses a job they dislike.” She’s talking about exploitation as a structural economic relation where the value created by workers and the value they receive are different by design.
And this is where LTV becomes convenient for her. If you assume value comes from labor time, then it is easy to define exploitation as surplus extraction. That doesn’t mean LTV is accurate economics. It just means it gives her a clean conceptual tool.
Your point about voluntary exchange doesn’t really land here because Young isn’t arguing about coercion or whether someone feels exploited. In political philosophy, “voluntary” does not automatically make a transaction non-exploitative. Otherwise, sweatshops, predatory lending, and 19th century coal company stores would all be non-exploitative simply because workers technically agreed.
It seems like LTV might still be useful philosophically because it lets us see how surplus and power move through a system, even if it fails as a literal theory of market pricing.
That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
Young isn’t talking about exploitation as “someone feels mistreated” or “someone chooses a job they dislike.” She’s talking about exploitation as a structural economic relation where the value created by workers and the value they receive are different by design.
And this is where LTV becomes convenient for her. If you assume value comes from labor time, then it is easy to define exploitation as surplus extraction. That doesn’t mean LTV is accurate economics. It just means it gives her a clean conceptual tool.
Your point about voluntary exchange doesn’t really land here because Young isn’t arguing about coercion or whether someone feels exploited. In political philosophy, “voluntary” does not automatically make a transaction non-exploitative. Otherwise, sweatshops, predatory lending, and 19th century coal company stores would all be non-exploitative simply because workers technically agreed.
It seems like LTV might still be useful philosophically because it lets us see how surplus and power move through a system, even if it fails as a literal theory of market pricing.
That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:29 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
Isn’t that basically the engine of the infinite growth model in capitalism?
Not exactly, but I see what you're trying to say.
quote:
Quarterly earnings, stock valuations, enrollment numbers, productivity metrics, clicks, engagement time, efficiency ratios, GDP targets. Corporations and markets chase the number because the number determines survival.
Correct. This leads to corporations often making incredibly bad decisions for their brands long term in order to maximize current shareholder value. Think private equity buying an up and coming food franchise, jacking up prices to customers, and massively reducing quality/portions until customers notice and stop going. Sure, taking those cost-savings measures temporarily improved their profit margins, but it came at the long term expense of the brand. However, the executives that made that decision already got their bonuses and left, leaving the next wave of executives to take the fall for it.
quote:
I’m saying the same dynamic exists in market systems. Both rely heavily on abstract metrics and both can distort real world outcomes when those metrics become the goal instead of a tool.
This is absolutely true. The main difference is that government planners tend to have more insulation from market forces due to a lack of competition. When Subway's executives make the wrong decisions and break their own pricing model, their franchises go out of business, and they lose their jobs. When a government central planner massively f&%ks up, because the central planner is typically an unelected bureaucrat, while the party that was in power when the bureaucrat enacted their plan may get voted out, the bureaucrat does not. They don't lose their job, so they get to just keep tinkering away no matter how wrong they are. There's no adequate feedback mechanism that will remove them from making decisions after being wrong enough times. Businesses go bankrupt, governments just keep chugging along unless there's a bloody revolution.
quote:
If both systems can be captured by “number-itis”, then what exactly makes LTV obsolete today? Is the problem with the theory itself or with the way modern economies (planned or market-based) translate human activity into measurable, tradable units?
LTV is not an economic system. It is merely a philosophy of how to quantify the value of labor. It is a flawed metric (as most metrics are) because it fails to account for everything that goes into labor. The number one rule of economics is that no one understands economics, certainly least of all, economists. The second rule is that the further away from the problem decisions are made, the worse those decisions tend to be overtime. Since compounding interest is the most powerful mathematical force over time, little inefficiencies created by central planning tend to add up to a LOT over time. Math is why communism straight up doesn't work. Owning everything in common requires for unilateral decision-making and unilateral buy in (both impossible) and requires for the decision maker to be both benevolent (while providing no incentives for them to be so) and competent (with overwhelming evidence showing that competence at scale is simply impossible).
If human beings were inherently good and incorruptible, central planners would be exactly as good as the economic data they're fed. However, because economic data is inherently difficult to ascertain, has too many interconnected metrics to easily zero in on just one or two to focus on to get the real picture, and is only as good as the imperfect people compiling it, central planners will always suck. The result is that central planners do what benefits them the most or at least what keeps them in their job the longest, that more often means corruption and partisanship more so than competency.
It turns out that some things just work better when you don't f&%k with them too much and just let people do their thing.
This post was edited on 12/4/25 at 4:35 pm
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:31 pm to 4cubbies
Ok, who gets to decide what the value is, so they can determine what the surplus is?
You opened a whole other rabbit hole w "sweatshops", but I'll leave that alone for now.
You opened a whole other rabbit hole w "sweatshops", but I'll leave that alone for now.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 4:33 pm to 4cubbies
I hear you, but that’s kinda the point — efficiency doesn’t mean “perfect logic,” it just means you spent what you had (time, gas, peace of mind) on what mattered most to you. You traded a little convenience for principle. That’s still an economic choice, bawette — just with heart instead of bottom line. It was an efficiency based on your decision logic.
Also- you are using the term efficiency in the narrowest possible manner- whereas economists use it to describe the full range of decision logic that individuals use to decide the best use of their time and money.
Also- you are using the term efficiency in the narrowest possible manner- whereas economists use it to describe the full range of decision logic that individuals use to decide the best use of their time and money.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 5:44 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
Right. I'm not making an argument in support of LVT, in case that wasn't clear.
No, I know you're not. We agree.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 7:00 pm to wackatimesthree
quote:
We agree
It’s not often I get to see these words posted to me
Posted on 12/4/25 at 7:10 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
“Every commodity's value is a function of the labor time necessary for its production.”
I get why she says this, but it also doesn't make sense in modern times. From any contemporary mainstream economics perspective, value comes from utility and scarcity. Basically, how badly people want a thing and how hard it is to get.
It didn't make sense in ancient times.
To point out that not every item has intrinsic value, in Imperial Rome, Pepper was extremely expensive due to the continual markup by middlemen.
It's production was very easy, but that was the only item useful enough to take long distances.
Well you might say, the cost of transport is included in production.
Well this also increased local prices far beyond what it would have been without that external demand signal. Spices in general always are worth more than other things of their creation cost.
This is the same with gladiators and slaves, individual ones were worth far more than the average, not due to labor invested.
Claret in medieval times worked the same way. It was not more labor intensive than other wines of the time, but more exclusive, commanding a higher price.
quote:
Young is working from the Labor Theory of Value (LTV). That’s the classical economics tradition of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and of course our friend, Karl Marx
That is like saying all oceans are the same ocean, you can make the point but it adds little as it obfuscates differences.
quote:
But the problem for me is that the LTV completely ignores scarcity and subjective utility. That makes it impossible to take as a comprehensive theory of value in 2025.
As I pointed out she was always completely wrong.
quote:
"The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it… Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things."
Smith isn’t talking about market price at all. He’s grounding value in labor commanded or saved
You are misreading it, it's about the effort required to gain the money to purchase something, nothing in that quote about the saving of labor.
He is also explicitly talking about the desirability of an item, how long and hard someone would work to obtain it.
quote:
And that’s the conceptual wall I keep hitting.
Here is another wall
Look at films, the value of a film is related to the total income, but that's not the value a single person gives to it, but it's attractiveness to a large number of customers, for a single produced project. Lower value films have the same price, but attract less customers, with out regard to the labor creating it, or the labor required of a single customer.
And if you think that's modern just look at art, the skill of an artist is not relative to the effort to gain such skills. People do not gain the same skills with equal effort.
quote:
But trying to reconcile it with our current understanding of markets, incentives, and price formation feels almost impossible. Maybe I’m just too entrenched in subjective value theory to “see” the LTV the way Young needs us to.
You should think over why you are trying to hard to reconcile whatever it is Young needs you to.
She was not a good theorist or a good economist, don't put lipstick on a pig.
This post was edited on 12/4/25 at 7:14 pm
Posted on 12/4/25 at 7:11 pm to Lsupimp
quote:
I hear you, but that’s kinda the point — efficiency doesn’t mean “perfect logic,” it just means you spent what you had (time, gas, peace of mind) on what mattered most to you. You traded a little convenience for principle. That’s still an economic choice, bawette — just with heart instead of bottom line. It was an efficiency based on your decision logic.
This still feels whimsical to me.
If any choice I make can be retroactively interpreted as “efficiency” simply because I valued it in that moment, then the term stops doing any real analytical work. It becomes a label applied after the fact to every single decision, not an actual description of a decision-making process.
quote:
Also- you are using the term efficiency in the narrowest possible manner- whereas economists use it to describe the full range of decision logic that individuals use to decide the best use of their time and money.
Maybe that is true, but when a word is stretched to cover absolutely every motivation people have (convenience, vibes, morality, fatigue, habit, spite, political values, random impulse) it stops meaning anything specific.
At that point, efficiency is just another way of saying “people do what they do,” which is not a theory of behavior. It is a tautology. It cannot be falsified and it cannot predict anything. It just reframes whatever happened as rational because it happened.
That is the part that makes me skeptical. I’m not denying subjective value or personal preference. I’m saying that calling all of it “efficiency” makes the concept so broad that it loses all usefulness.
I’m so glad we’re friends again because I’m really enjoying this exchange btw.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 7:22 pm to stuntman
quote:
Ok, who gets to decide what the value is, so they can determine what the surplus is?
The point isn’t that some person sits around and “decides” what the value is. Structural theories don’t work that way.
In Young’s framework (and in Marxist or neo-Marxist surplus theories more broadly), surplus is not a moral judgment. It’s an analytical description of how production works. Labor creates more value than the wages workers are paid. The difference becomes profit, rent, dividends, etc.
There doesn’t need to be a central planner or a moral referee to define it. It is simply the gap between the value that labor inputs create and the compensation labor receives.
That’s why I keep coming back to LTV. Even if it doesn’t work as an actual price theory today, it gives scholars a way to measure that structural gap. Of course, scholarship isn’t always useful in actual practice, but I’m working on a doctorate so I have dig into it even (or especially) when I disagree with it.
Your question actually reinforces my original point. Modern marginalist economics has no structural concept of surplus extraction. Everything reduces to “the wage is what the wage is because someone agreed to it.” There is no analytical room for exploitation in that framework, which is why Young needs LTV. It’s the only tool that lets her describe exploitation as a systemic relation rather than a personal grievance.
quote:
You opened a whole other rabbit hole w "sweatshops", but I'll leave that alone for now.
I can probably predict where you’d like to go with this.
Posted on 12/4/25 at 7:37 pm to 4cubbies
quote:
Labor Theory of Value
Go labor an hour taking a dump and see how much someone is willing to pay for the output.
Value is subjective.
Page 6 of 8
Popular
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News