Question about surplus value - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15262941
Truth To Power wrote:Animals don't have rights; and the act of picking something up removes it from nature, thus creating a "product" that did not previously exist. As the rock is no longer there, it is not something that others would otherwise have been at liberty to use.

But if it is something they have NOT removed from nature, but merely claime to own, then the only way they can stop you from using it is by force.

GET IT???

Forcibly depriving others, without just and agreed compensation, of what they would otherwise have -- like the liberty to use a natural resource -- is theft.

Ok so humans and every other animal has been "stealing" natural resources and creating & defending territory since the beginning of time. That's life. Its not theft until its a law that can be enforced with violence. The entire world is regulated with violence. And sorry but you don't make the rules no matter how much you complain.
#15262942
Truth To Power wrote:
"the value of the additional production created by the employer using the producer goods provided by investors



You're running into the 'First Cause' problem with this, TTP, since we then have to ask how *any* value at all got into these supply chains in the *first place*.

Sure, owners can 'input' stuff, mix it up or sort it out, and 'output' stuff, all without doing any wage labor, and all without creating any new values.

*You're* contending that the *synergistic* / organizational effects of good-management will be enough to increase saleable values in the 'output' product, but *I'll* simply ask why *labor* is being employed *at all* if all posited 'value' in the supply chains simply cascades-forward / feeds-forward like this, entirely *irrespective* of what labor / employees may happen to be doing.

Do workers / employees have any material impact on the flows of value down the assembly lines, or is all value actually taking place solely in the office upstairs?


material-economic exploitation

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Spoiler: show
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#15262950
Rancid wrote:Communism is the answer, because communism.

Well yeah communism is like a placeholder for the very abstract end. Though if one accepts much of Marx’s assessment, then the need to rid capitalism and overcome it somehow is still imperative and not a matter of slight changes here and there. Capitalism is no longer justified on any grounds than alternatives must be worse. Even now culturally things are stuck in a reference to some aesthetic past.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Virtue%20and%20Utopia.pdf
From whence does a socialist ethic arise? Not by transplanting a utopian vision of socialist society into the present, in ‘miniature’. No. It is more the other way around: the utopian vision of socialist society is a ‘projection’ of our (somewhat) shared socialist ethic on to a future world. This socialist ethic exists and develops precisely in and through the practices in which we all collaborate together (cooperating and conflicting) and work through our differences, make our mistakes and share our successes and failures, and learn together.

If Maeckelbergh’s idea of ‘reciprocal contamination’ means anything it must mean the negotiation and internalisation of shared ethics in the course of collaborating in common projects. If this is the case, then it would be very useful to try to elaborate this socialist ethics and discuss it.
This is a very important and concrete task, because as Franks notes, there will never come a time when all conflicts have been resolved. To moderate the differences within the anti-capitalist movement is surely the most attractive way to develop the ethics of socialist society in which an even wider range of aspirations will exist.

The mere posing of socialist society as an end is misconceived. It is not a question of bringing means and ends into conformity, as many argue, and any attempt to do so can only lead to a barren utopianism by subordinating our means ‒ our organising practices of today ‒ to an imaginary utopia ‒ a world in which the socialist ethic has been universalised. In fact, when I do this, what is actually happening is that:

I begin with my spontaneously adopted ethics;
I then (consciously or unconsciously) project them on to a future socialist society, and
I then deduce the ethics with which I actually began, but now with the illusory justification that it prefigures our shared end, socialist society.

In other words, it is a fraud. (It is somewhat like the argument which project capitalist competition on to Nature, and then claimed that competition is the way of the world, human as well as natural). It implies discussing how to collaborate here and now in terms of how we think people living in some imaginary future society would collaborate, when differences in wealth, power, education and welfare have been overcome and no longer have to be taken into account.

No, the socialist ethic has to be justified in terms of the exigencies of organising here and now, in the light of the wisdom we have inherited from our shared tradition. ‘Socialist society’ has no determinate content other than the generalisation of the socialist ethic. But the socialist ethic is not something for the future: it is now. The means of our activity, including the social consciousness of our activists, are in fact elements of the capitalist society of which we are a part and which is the very object which we are trying to change. This is where the identity of means and ends is located, in the subjectivity of the social strata which are thrown into opposition by the development of capitalism itself.

The social structures and forms in which the socialist ethic might be universalised must remain obscure to us for some time. Franks claims (p. 141) that anarchism lacks “determinate ends” and surely this must be true for all of us in this tradition.
#15262952
Wellsy wrote:



the socialist ethic has to be justified in terms of the exigencies of organising here and now,



But the socialist ethic is not something for the future: it is now.



Franks claims (p. 141) that anarchism lacks “determinate ends” and surely this must be true for all of us in this tradition.



---


F.y.i.:



The situationists argued that advanced capitalism manufactured false desires; literally in the sense of ubiquitous advertising and the glorification of accumulated capital, and more broadly in the abstraction and reification of the more ephemeral experiences of authentic life into commodities. The experimental direction of situationist activity consisted of setting up temporary environments favorable to the fulfillment of true and authentic human desires in response.[4]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation ... _and_usage
#15262959

Much of the left around the world had enthused at the Cultural Revolution. In many countries opponents of the US war in Vietnam carried portraits of Mao Zedong as well as the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. The trite sayings in the Little Red Book of ‘Mao’s thoughts’ were presented as a guide to socialist activity. Yet in 1972, as more US bombers hit targets in Vietnam than ever before, Mao greeted US president Nixon in Beijing, and by 1977, under Deng, China was beginning to embrace the market more furiously than Russia under Stalin’s successors.

The Western media saw such twists and turns as a result of wild irrationality. By the late 1970s many of those on the left who had identified with Maoism in the 1960s agreed, and turned their backs on socialism. A whole school of ex-Maoist ‘New Philosophers’ emerged in France, who taught that revolution automatically leads to tyranny and that the revolutionary left are as bad as the fascist right. Yet there is a simple, rational explanation for the apparently irrational course of Chinese history over a quarter of a century. China simply did not have the internal resources to pursue the Stalinist path of forced industrialisation successfully, however much its rulers starved the peasants and squeezed the workers. But there were no other easy options after a century of imperialist plundering. Unable to find rational solutions, the country’s rulers were tempted by irrational ones.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 576
#15262962
Unthinking Majority wrote:Ok so humans and every other animal has been "stealing" natural resources and creating & defending territory since the beginning of time.

No. There is a difference between extracting a natural resource by labor, thereby creating rightful property in a product that did not previously exist, and merely appropriating a resource, thereby abrogating others' liberty rights to use it while creating nothing new, as landowners do. Extracting a resource does not deprive others of anything they would otherwise have. Appropriating it does. Before people invented property in land, any animal that wanted to exclude others from a territory had to do it himself, by force, constantly, assuming the associated risks and costs. Property is defended socially, by people who are not its owners.
That's life.

No it isn't. Exclusive private tenure to land is a human institution that does not have to be an engine of massive, systematic, institutionalized, and wholly gratuitous injustice -- but under capitalism and every other system of private landowner privilege, is.
Its not theft until its a law that can be enforced with violence.

False. Theft is forcibly depriving others of what they would otherwise have without making just compensation. That describes appropriation of natural resources as private property to a T.
The entire world is regulated with violence.

Garbage. The whole point of civilization is to regulate human relations with a minimum of violence and a maximum of liberty, justice and prosperity. Private ownership of land merely contradicts that goal.
And sorry but you don't make the rules no matter how much you complain.

:roll: What on earth do you incorrectly imagine the point of such a comment could be? Are you aware that such a rejoinder could with equal "logic" have been made -- and was -- by slave owners to the abolitionists, thereby proving that it is fallacious, disingenuous and evil?

I am aware that evil people have the power, thanks, and that disingenuous apologists for evil, like you, want them to continue to exercise it, oppressing, impoverishing, enslaving and murdering billions of innocent people. You want private landowners to be legally entitled to rob, oppress, starve, brutalize, enslave, torture and murder the landless, as they have in EVERY SINGLE SOCIETY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD where private landowning has been well established, but government did not intervene massively to rescue the landless from enslavement by landowners. It's that simple.
#15262982
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Paint the world red at gunpoint, then steal rich people's stuff at gunpoint.



The "theory"'s been *improved* since then.... (grin)



additive prioritizations'

Better, I think, would be an approach that is more routine and less time-sensitive in prioritizing among responders -- the thing that would differentiate demand would be people's *own* prioritizations, in relation to *all other* possibilities for demands. This means that only those most focused on Product 'X' or Event 'Y', to the abandonment of all else (relatively speaking), over several iterations (days), would be seen as 'most-wanting' of it, for ultimate receipt.

My 'communist supply and demand' model, fortunately, uses this approach as a matter of course:

consumption [demand] -- Every person in a locality has a standard, one-through-infinity ranking system of political demands available to them, updated daily

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination

consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174


I'm also realizing that this model / method of demand-prioritization can be used in such a way as to lend relative *weight* to a person's bid for any given product or calendar event, if there happens to be a limited supply and a more-intensive prioritization ('rationing') is called-for by the objective situation:

Since everyone has a standard one-through-infinity template to use on a daily basis for all political and/or economic demands, this template lends itself to consumer-political-type *organizing* in the case that such is necessary -- someone's 'passion' for a particular demand could be formally demonstrated by their recruiting of *others* to direct one or several of *their* ranking slots, for as many days / iterations as they like, to the person who is trying to beat-out others for the limited quantity.

Recall:

[A]ggregating these lists, by ranking (#1, #2, #3, etc.), is *no big deal* for any given computer. What we would want to see is what the rankings are for milk and steel, by rank position. So how many people put 'milk' for #1 -- ? How many people put 'steel' for #1 -- ? How many people put 'milk' for #2 -- ? And how many people put 'steel' for #2 -- ? (Etc.)

*This* would be socially useful information that could be the whole basis for a socialist political economy.

So, by extension, if someone was particularly interested in 'Event Y', they might undertake efforts to convince others to *donate* their ranking slots to them, forgoing 'milk' and 'steel' (for example) for positions #1 and/or #2. Formally these others would put 'Person Z for Event Y' for positions 1 and/or 2, etc., for as many days / iterations as they might want to donate. This, in effect, would be a populist-political-type campaign, of whatever magnitude, for the sake of a person's own particularly favored consumption preferences, given an unavoidably limited supply of it, whatever it may be.

tinyurl.com/additive-prioritizations



https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338
#15262992
ckaihatsu wrote:You're running into the 'First Cause' problem with this, TTP,

Garbage.
since we then have to ask how *any* value at all got into these supply chains in the *first place*.

And the answer is: by people being able to trade for things they want and produce things others want.
Sure, owners can 'input' stuff, mix it up or sort it out, and 'output' stuff, all without doing any wage labor, and all without creating any new values.

Or, if production works as intended, while creating new values.
*You're* contending that the *synergistic* / organizational effects of good-management will be enough to increase saleable values in the 'output' product,

No, there is no such guarantee. When the producer performs the labor of applying the production factors to the production process, he takes the risk that the product will not be more valuable than what is consumed to produce it.
but *I'll* simply ask why *labor* is being employed *at all* if all posited 'value' in the supply chains simply cascades-forward / feeds-forward like this, entirely *irrespective* of what labor / employees may happen to be doing.

Because production does not work as you have described in the bolded clause. The factors of production that the producer arranges to apply to the production process -- natural resources, labor, and producer goods -- all contribute to the value of the product.
Do workers / employees have any material impact on the flows of value down the assembly lines, or is all value actually taking place solely in the office upstairs?

All three factors contribute to the product, obviously. You know this. Why pretend you do not?
#15263022
ckaihatsu wrote:I'll welcome any *examples*, or references, you may have here.

:lol: :lol: Oh, for pity's sake. Are you seriously claiming not to know the fact that raw land has (often astronomical) exchange value??? Here:

https://www.landwatch.com/land
Note, though, that *historically*, the *government* has provided the initial offering of land to *land speculators*:

Garbage. Land titles have been issued for many reasons, speculation being only one of them.
TTP, at *this* point in things all *I* have to say is 'land needs landscaping',

Which is a bald falsehood, as I have already proved. Our remote ancestors used land to survive for millions of years without landscaping it, and it never became private property until it already had exchange value. Land must already BE useful before it can BE landscaped, or have any value. See how that works?
and you're plumb out of luck.

I'm not the one constantly making objectively and indisputably false claims, here. You are.
As soon as *any* rentier capital, like real estate, is built-up / developed, and provides use-value continuously, it's then 'automatic' in providing that service-value endlessly, all without requiring any human-labor inputs.

No, that is just more absurd, anti-rational Marxist garbage contradicted by objective fact. While natural resources indeed do not need maintenance to retain their value -- which often increases without their owners lifting a finger -- any improvements most certainly do; and even when they are maintained, they will eventually depreciate and become worthless.
The *point* of this, of course -- and especially since you're being so evasive

That is another bald falsehood. I am striving mightily, though so far without success, to focus your attention on the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality, and it is you who are evading them by spewing obvious absurdities.
-- is that it's automatically a *crisis* for '[exchange] value', because how the hell is anyone supposed to find a per-use 'value' / price for usage when there's no telling how many years the machine or device will be in service.

People who are willing to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality (i.e., not you) can estimate the useful lifespan of improvements, and their expected depreciation.
When *labor* is actively involved there's a *standard* to go by, that of the per-hour *wage* rate.

There is a standard in any case: what the market says.
But for a lump-sum *purchase* (building, laundromat, AI) that then parcels-out laborless automatic service over time, how can each portion of 'service' be appropriately *quantified* and commodified on any consistent basis -- ?

By the market. The purchase value of an input is based on what the market will pay for the output, not the other way around. That's Jevons's conclusive refutation of the Labor Theory of Value.
How much labor *went into* the asset or resource, and why isn't resulting pricing based on those initial *production costs* (equity capital depreciation plus labor costs), parceled-out into proportionately-priced packets of automatic-service-value, with a proportionate per-portion markup.

Because value is determined by supply and demand, not production cost. The production cost of raw land was $0. See above for how much it is now worth.
So *logistically* it's a *mess*, and is also along the lines of an economic 'market failure' -- supply-and-demand-type pricing *fails* when the 'supply' is unerringly available with negligible additional unit cost (as with providing laundromat machines, and/or digital copying, too).

No, that's nothing but absurd and anti-economic Marxist tripe contrary to objective fact.

<absurd Marxist tripe mercifully snipped>
#15263124
Truth To Power wrote:
it is precisely because their capital investments -- not any increased contribution by labor -- increase value production that they yield a return on that investment.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning


Truth To Power wrote:
investment in productive capital causes the increased value produced, not any increased or "surplus" value of labor.



So larger market cap means larger *deals* -- but where does the 'greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts' part come into play, that you're implicitly claiming, if not from the actual realtime exploitation of surplus labor value -- ?


---


Truth To Power wrote:
Right. If she and Ben are the proprietors of the pizza shop, their wages increase with the added production of value that Ben's purchase of the new oven caused. If she is Ben's employee, she is paid the market wage both before and after Ben provides the new oven, and has no claim to more than that as a result of Ben's investment. Ben's investment is what caused the increase in value produced, not Abby's labor, so it is not "surplus labor value." It is value Ben created by his investment in the electric oven.



It's *capitalism* that gives us this realistically *absurd* scenario, where Abby / 'old money' has a greater interest in *hanging on to outdated equipment* -- and *that's* assuming it can remain competitive for market share parallel to Ben's new electric oven.

Abby can either be Ben's employee for a necessarily-exploitative wage, stick with *her own* means, the older wood-fired oven, or somehow entreat her husband to stop being such a capitalist within the marriage / household and allow for the co-proprietorship thing (over a measly $300 oven).


Truth To Power wrote:
Slave labor is labor compelled by force. No one is forcing Abby to work for Ben. He has simply offered her access to an economic opportunity she would not otherwise have,


Truth To Power wrote:
she has voluntarily accepted that offer.



Your 'boilerplate' treatment here is insufficient, since it's clear that Ben would be *ripping Abby off* if they couldn't find business terms that were more equitable to each other's respective material positions.

It's even murky *ethical* terrain, arguably, since Abby could validly readily question why there isn't a more *qualitative* conversation going on, instead of the quick *bottom-lining* / fait-accompli -- with a rush to maintain and develop *existing* capital structures irrespective of any and all *other* directions of investment strategy.

TLDR: Are Abby and Ben aiming to maximize *individual* returns on investment, or *joint* returns on investment?


Truth To Power wrote:
If she is Ben's employee, she is being compensated at the wage she voluntarily accepted.



Hypothetically, and myopically.


Truth To Power wrote:
Why would Ben pay her more for making pizzas than for chopping wood and tending the fire, when making pizzas is easier, and she would rather do that than chop wood and tend the fire anyway?



Again, all *hypothetical* -- was Abby even *asked* about any of this?


Truth To Power wrote:
There is no "hostile takeover" or "enslavement" by Ben.


Truth To Power wrote:
Whether Ben and Abby are the proprietors of the pizza shop or Abby is Ben's employee, nothing has changed except that Ben's contribution of the new oven has increased the value of what Abby's labor produces. Indeed, Abby would rather make pizzas for her wages than chop wood and tend the fire whether she and Ben are the proprietors or Ben is her employer.



'Wages' here actually means 'dividends' *or* 'wages', depending on whether Abby is cut-in or not on the 'co-proprietorship' legal entity.


Truth To Power wrote:
The laundromat machines indisputably DO NOT function the same way as land and other assets owned through privilege because use of the machines, unlike the land, is an opportunity that is provided by the machines' owner, and would not otherwise have been available.



And, likewise, the *land* / real estate / 'rentier capital' would not be available if *it* had not been worked-on, by labor, to *commodify* it, to confer *use value*, for actual usability and exchangeability.


Truth To Power wrote:
"Commodities" is an irrelevant Marxist anti-concept. The laundromat machines produce the value of convenience that the customers willingly pay for. Land provides access to the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location. It is not the land but the landowner who is not providing any of those things to the production process.



You're *so close* -- if you can just alter your perception / perspective of this issue, to *generalize* from the localist *landowner*, to *all* landowner-like owners of rentier capital (all assets and resources, all necessarily non-commodity-productive), then you'd see that they're all identical *in function*.


Land 'hosts' public infrastructure and government services.

'Real estate' -- developed land -- hosts *private* infrastructure and *commercial* services.


Communal laundromats 'host' clothes-cleaning infrastructure and government *provisioning* over such laundromat machines.

*Commercial* laundromats host clothes-cleaning infrastructure and 'fee-for-service', *for-profit* convenience, from *private ownership* of those machines.


AI 'hosts' neural networks, trained or untrained, ready for limitless usage with given energy / electricity inputs.

The AI neural network itself could be 'public' / governmental, as at a college or university, or it could be *private*, as at a portal website, by subscription fee.


Do these examples make the reality any *clearer* for you, TTP -- ?

Endless laborless commodities / products / services *spring forth* from all of these *rentier*-type capital investments, and *yes*, including your favorite-example of 'land' / real estate, too.

Note that while end-user / customer *use-value* is being provided by all the examples here, actual *commodities* *aren't*, strictly speaking, since commodity-production necessarily requires *wage labor* -- otherwise there's no actual *circulation* / economic social-organization taking place, as through publicly-available pooled joint-stock equity investments, for the production of commodities (goods and services).

The closed-loop of fee-for-service -- like clean clothes from a laundromat machine -- means that *deflation* (corraled valuations of separate, distinct assets and resources) is necessarily underway, with *increasing* asset valuations of the (laundromat) business as revenue streams in over time, all without the expense of labor costs.

So -- in what other aspect of daily real life would we ever find a pool of 'x' value that simply *gains* in monetary value (minus depreciation) *all by itself*, from the incoming revenue stream, and without any continuous ongoing labor-value inputs -- ?

The rentier-asset revenue stream is *not* from the machine producing discrete *commodities* -- because that would require *labor*, and labor-hour-wage-based *continuous valuations*, for commodity-production *new exchange values*.

No new exchange values are produced by *rentier* capital (land, etc.), though, because the end-user / customer fee for service has to be *pre-existing* value in the economy, as with rent from either equity capital, or from the worker.

Rentier, necessarily-non-commodity-productive assets and resources only *drain* the economy of value and circulation -- such rentier assets are *deflationary sinkholes* in the overall economy.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Land, and *all other* asset and resource classes, are all *rentier* capital, and do *not* involve value creation at all.



Truth To Power wrote:
Ben's contribution of the oven increased the value of pizza creation by $2K/day. The land was already there anyway; the oven wasn't.



Who paid the mortgage for the land / real estate that the pizzeria sits on, and who holds the *title* to that real estate -- ?

It's *another* form of rentier capital, land, which was definitely *not* in its raw, natural state when the pizzeria building was plopped down onto the site. Therefore the 'land' that the building sits on first required *capital investment*, for *landscaping*, as with any other rentier-capital asset or resource.

And, who does the labor to make the actual pizzas?

If the output of pizzas has *tripled* due to the new electric oven, the *labor* involved in that process will be triple as well -- Abby would have a personal individual interest in the *co-proprietorship* vehicle at this point, instead of working three times as hard for the same unchanged wage rate as before.


Truth To Power wrote:
The land must already have been usable before it could be transformed.



B.S. -- land does *not* have to 'already be usable'. Land is *transformed* as a matter of course, to *make* it usable and saleable, like *any other* form of rentier capital like gemstones or AI neural networks.


Truth To Power wrote:
That is why raw, unimproved land has (often astronomical) exchange value. Duh.



No -- in the U.S. the government provided initial land offerings at *below market* rates, based on *favoritism*. Historically, the government provided the initial offering of land to *land speculators*:



For the first decades of its existence, the young US government supported itself not only with tariffs but also by selling western lands. Most of the sales of prime land were not to settlers but to speculators who eventually sold the fertile land to settlers. If the US had cut out the middle man, it could have directed all those sale proceeds into the public treasury. However, most often the employees of the government’s land office were in cahoots with the speculators; everybody knew what was going on (Everett Dick, The Lure of the Land, 1970). Further, the government did not have to sell the land but could have leased it, just as the modern state of Israel does today. Or, if selling, government could tax or otherwise levy land at its annual rental value (functionally, no different from leasing it).



https://www.progress.org/articles/histo ... peculation



viewtopic.php?p=15262940#p15262940



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Now guess which of these investments actually produce *new commodities* -- is it the [1] land, the [2] washing machines, or [3] the factory -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
All of them contribute to value produced. The owners of the washing machines and factory contribute them to production, as they would not otherwise have been available. It is just the land's owner who doesn't contribute, but merely pockets the value of the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location, while contributing nothing himself.



That's not really correct -- you seem to think that land ownership confers some kind of *total social authority* within those bounds, even over government spending, the persons on that land, and all natural resources there as well.

Your 'totality' social conception here resembles *feudalism* more than anything *modern*, with *civil rights*.
#15263178
Forum rules unfortunately prohibit me from identifying ckaihatsu's claims for what they indisputably are. Readers should be able to figure it out, though:
ckaihatsu wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

No, that's just more false, absurd, and disingenuous tripe from you. There is nothing "circular" about the fact that increasing production by providing producer goods earns a return.
So larger market cap

It has nothing to do with market cap. Stop trying to change the subject every time I prove you objectively wrong -- which is always.
means larger *deals*

No, that's just another ridiculous non sequitur fallacy from you. The size of the deals is utterly irrelevant. One customer buying 100 pizzas is a bigger deal than 1000 customers each buying one, but the volume is 10x bigger for the latter business. You are just trying to prevent yourself from knowing any relevant facts -- and with, I must concede, remarkable success.
-- but where does the 'greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts' part come into play, that you're implicitly claiming, if not from the actual realtime exploitation of surplus labor value -- ?

From the increase in production the investor's contribution of producer goods causes. You just have to contrive some way to prevent yourself from knowing the fact that that increase comes from what the investor, not the worker, contributes.
It's *capitalism* that gives us this realistically *absurd* scenario,

It's not absurd, and it has nothing to do with capitalism. I have simply described a situation that could occur in any economy.
where Abby / 'old money'

No, that's just more absurd and disingenuous garbage from you with no basis in fact.
has a greater interest in *hanging on to outdated equipment*

No she doesn't. You simply made that up. It's nothing but more of your usual anti-factual, anti-rational, anti-economic Marxist bull$#!+.

Don't you understand what it means when all you can ever offer is absurd and disingenuous garbage that no one of normal intelligence over the age of nine could possibly believe?
-- and *that's* assuming it can remain competitive for market share parallel to Ben's new electric oven.

Anti-economic gibberish.
Abby can either be Ben's employee for a necessarily-exploitative wage,

There's nothing exploitative about it. You simply made that up. It's just more of your absurd, anti-economic Marxist garbage with no basis in fact.
stick with *her own* means, the older wood-fired oven,

Of course, she is free to decline the superior opportunity Ben offers. For example, if she is incredibly stupid, and believes brainless, anti-rational, anti-economic Marxist garbage, she might be able to persuade herself that doing the easier work of making pizzas rather than chopping wood and tending the fire is "exploitation." But realistically, very few people are that stupid.
or somehow entreat her husband to stop being such a capitalist within the marriage / household

You mean to stop making the household more productive and wealthier by contributing the producer goods that cause the increase in value it produces? Why would she be so stupid, anti-productive, and evil? She's not a Marxist, after all -- almost no working person ever has been.
and allow for the co-proprietorship thing (over a measly $300 oven).

Why are you pretending that the amount of Ben's investment is relevant? It couldn't matter less if the new oven cost $300, $3K, $3M or $3. It is still HIS INVESTMENT that CAUSES the increase in value produced, not Abby's labor. It also couldn't matter less if Abby and Ben are co-proprietors or Abby is Ben's employee: it is still BEN, not ABBY who has CAUSED the increase in production by providing the new oven, and it is therefore nothing but a stupid, absurd, and dishonest anti-economic Marxist anti-concept to call the additional value produced by Ben's contribution surplus "labor" value.
Your 'boilerplate' treatment here is insufficient,

No. The facts I identified prove me objectively right and you objectively wrong.
since it's clear that Ben would be *ripping Abby off* if they couldn't find business terms that were more equitable to each other's respective material positions.

No it isn't. What's really clear is that you are just makin' absurd and disingenuous Marxist $#!+ up again. How could Ben possibly be "ripping Abby off" when nothing he has done has made her any worse off than if he had never existed?
It's even murky *ethical* terrain, arguably,

No, it most certainly is not. You are just trying to pretend that good is evil and evil good.
since Abby could validly readily question why there isn't a more *qualitative* conversation going on, instead of the quick *bottom-lining* / fait-accompli -- with a rush to maintain and develop *existing* capital structures irrespective of any and all *other* directions of investment strategy.

No, she most certainly could not. Abby could only question Ben's offer of access to better economic opportunity that she would not otherwise have had if she was a stupid, evil, lying piece of Marxist $#!+.
TLDR:

It wasn't too long. I am very concise -- unlike people who post lengthy quotations of absurd and disingenuous Marxist gibberish.
Are Abby and Ben aiming to maximize *individual* returns on investment, or *joint* returns on investment?

Both, because unlike stupid, evil, lying pieces of Marxist $#!+, they know there is no conflict between them.
Hypothetically, and myopically.

No. Factually, and indisputably.
Again, all *hypothetical* -- was Abby even *asked* about any of this?

It's not hypothetical. It's the actual history of how investors increase production. And whether Abby was asked or not is completely irrelevant to the fact that it is Ben's investment that has increased pizza production, not the magical appearance some "surplus" in the value of Abby's labor. If Abby doesn't want to produce more pizzas, Ben can find someone who is not a stupid, evil, lying sack of Marxist $#!+ to do her job.
'Wages' here actually means 'dividends' *or* 'wages', depending on whether Abby is cut-in or not on the 'co-proprietorship' legal entity.

No, it means what she is paid for her labor. If she is a co-owner, then that is a different income stream.
And, likewise, the *land* / real estate / 'rentier capital' would not be available if *it* had not been worked-on, by labor, to *commodify* it, to confer *use value*, for actual usability and exchangeability.

No, that is just the same bald, absurd falsehood you have been repeating ad nauseam. Everyone reading this, including you, knows that raw land, which indisputably existed before any human being, WAS and IS already available for use, and has to already BE useful BEFORE it can be worked on by labor, and it is precisely the greater usefulness of specific PARCELS of RAW land that MAKEthem more suitable to be worked on than others that are less useful. None of this is disputable. You just have to deny it because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
You're *so close*

Wish I could say the same...
-- if you can just alter your perception / perspective of this issue, to *generalize* from the localist *landowner*, to *all* landowner-like owners of rentier capital (all assets and resources, all necessarily non-commodity-productive), then you'd see that they're all identical *in function*.

No I could not, because they are indisputably not, as I have proved to you many times. Natural resources were by definition already available for use with no help from their owners or any previous owner. Producer goods were not, because they had to be brought into existence by their initial owners and provided to the production process by their current owners. Every time you deny that self-evident and indisputable fact of objective physical reality, you only prove that your false and evil Marxist beliefs are more important to you than liberty, justice, the condition and prosperity of the working class, or the truth.
Land 'hosts' public infrastructure and government services.

And the private owners of nearby land are privileged to charge everyone else for permission to access them.
'Real estate' -- developed land -- hosts *private* infrastructure and *commercial* services.

No, your claims are objectively false. Real estate includes raw, undeveloped land; and its differing physical qualities and access to services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities determine its value and what kind of labor and investment is most appropriately devoted to developing it.
Communal laundromats 'host' clothes-cleaning infrastructure and government *provisioning* over such laundromat machines.

And the machines are provided by government, which makes the service useful and worth paying for.
*Commercial* laundromats host clothes-cleaning infrastructure and 'fee-for-service', *for-profit* convenience, from *private ownership* of those machines.

Because the private providers of the machines are the ones who make the service useful and worth paying for.
AI 'hosts' neural networks, trained or untrained, ready for limitless usage with given energy / electricity inputs.

The AI neural network itself could be 'public' / governmental, as at a college or university, or it could be *private*, as at a portal website, by subscription fee.

And in either case, the usefulness of the hardware and software are provided by the investment that caused them to exist, not the "surplus value" of some wage worker who tightened a screw on it.
Do these examples make the reality any *clearer* for you, TTP -- ?

I have made the reality crystal clear to you and everyone else reading this. I am not the one who can't find a willingness to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality, here. You are.
Endless laborless commodities / products / services *spring forth* from all of these *rentier*-type capital investments, and *yes*, including your favorite-example of 'land' / real estate, too.

No they don't.
Note that while end-user / customer *use-value* is being provided by all the examples here, actual *commodities* *aren't*, strictly speaking, since commodity-production necessarily requires *wage labor* -- otherwise there's no actual *circulation* / economic social-organization taking place, as through publicly-available pooled joint-stock equity investments, for the production of commodities (goods and services).

That is absurd Marxist gibberish with no relation to economic reality.
The closed-loop of fee-for-service -- like clean clothes from a laundromat machine -- means that *deflation* (corraled valuations of separate, distinct assets and resources) is necessarily underway, with *increasing* asset valuations of the (laundromat) business as revenue streams in over time, all without the expense of labor costs.

That is absurd Marxist gibberish with no relation to economic reality. The machines will depreciate over time as they wear out, and labor is required to maintain them.

Almost everything you say on this subject is just objectively false.
So -- in what other aspect of daily real life would we ever find a pool of 'x' value that simply *gains* in monetary value (minus depreciation) *all by itself*, from the incoming revenue stream, and without any continuous ongoing labor-value inputs -- ?

Land, which does not depreciate but appreciates, and requires no labor input from its owner to make him rich.
The rentier-asset revenue stream is *not* from the machine producing discrete *commodities* -- because that would require *labor*, and labor-hour-wage-based *continuous valuations*, for commodity-production *new exchange values*.

Gibberish.
No new exchange values are produced by *rentier* capital (land, etc.), though, because the end-user / customer fee for service has to be *pre-existing* value in the economy, as with rent from either equity capital, or from the worker.

No, that's false, and only proves you don't understand any economics.
Rentier, necessarily-non-commodity-productive assets and resources only *drain* the economy of value and circulation -- such rentier assets are *deflationary sinkholes* in the overall economy.

Gibberish with no discernible relation to fact.
Who paid the mortgage for the land / real estate that the pizzeria sits on, and who holds the *title* to that real estate -- ?

How could that possibly be relevant to the fact that Ben's contribution of the new oven, not any magical "surplus" in the value of Abby's labor, greatly increased the pizzeria's production of value?
It's *another* form of rentier capital, land, which was definitely *not* in its raw, natural state when the pizzeria building was plopped down onto the site.

Sure it was. The previous improvements were removed, and then the site sat vacant and overgrown for 30 years before the pizzeria owners provided the building.
Therefore the 'land' that the building sits on first required *capital investment*, for *landscaping*, as with any other rentier-capital asset or resource.

No it didn't. The pizzeria owners acquired it in its unimproved state. You are just repeating the same bald falsehood you have already seen proved false many times.
And, who does the labor to make the actual pizzas?

Abby, using the equipment Ben provided, which greatly increases the value her contribution adds to.
If the output of pizzas has *tripled* due to the new electric oven, the *labor* involved in that process will be triple as well

No, I already proved that is false.
-- Abby would have a personal individual interest in the *co-proprietorship* vehicle at this point, instead of working three times as hard for the same unchanged wage rate as before.

No, she's not working three times as hard. That's just another bald fabrication on your part. She's simply spending more time making pizzas because she no longer has to chop wood and tend the fire.
B.S.

No, it is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality.
-- land does *not* have to 'already be usable'.

It most certainly does. How could anyone use it to make improvements if it were not already usable, hmmmmm?
Land is *transformed* as a matter of course, to *make* it usable and saleable, like *any other* form of rentier capital like gemstones or AI neural networks.

No, you are just repeating the same bald, outright falsehood I have already proved false many times. Raw land is ALREADY salable, and must ALREADY BE usable BEFORE it can be transformed. It already exists, with no help from its owner or any previous owner. Gemstones and AI networks do not. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way of identifying that fact for you so that you would find a willingness to know it.
No

Yes. You are just denying indisputable facts.
-- in the U.S. the government provided initial land offerings at *below market* rates, based on *favoritism*.

Much as almost all governments that have ever issued private land titles have done.
Historically, the government provided the initial offering of land to *land speculators*:

That is completely irrelevant to the FACT that raw land often changes hands for astronomical sums, proving me objectively right and you objectively wrong.

Don't you understand what it means when the facts of objective physical reality always prove you wrong?
That's not really correct

It is most certainly and indisputably correct.
-- you seem to think that land ownership confers some kind of *total social authority* within those bounds, even over government spending, the persons on that land, and all natural resources there as well.

It confers the legal entitlement to charge others full market value for permission to access the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location.
Your 'totality' social conception here resembles *feudalism* more than anything *modern*, with *civil rights*.

No, you made that up. I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
#15263560
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're running into the 'First Cause' problem with this, TTP,



Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage.



ckaihatsu wrote:
since we then have to ask how *any* value at all got into these supply chains in the *first place*.



Truth To Power wrote:
And the answer is: by people being able to trade for things they want and produce things others want.



'Produce' -- is that white-collar, pink-collar, and/or blue-collar labor -- ?

('Trade' implies no-new-value-created / only-fees-and-costs / 'transaction costs', while 'produce' implies 'new stuff made', or 'service rendered to you in person'.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, owners can 'input' stuff, mix it up or sort it out, and 'output' stuff, all without doing any wage labor, and all without creating any new values.



Truth To Power wrote:
Or, if production works as intended, while creating new values.



*Do* owners typically create / produce *new values*, though -- I think it's more like internal paper-shuffling and the digital coin-counting of the day's take.


ckaihatsu wrote:
*You're* contending that the *synergistic* / organizational effects of good-management will be enough to increase saleable values in the 'output' product,



Truth To Power wrote:
No, there is no such guarantee. When the producer performs the labor of applying the production factors to the production process, he takes the risk that the product will not be more valuable than what is consumed to produce it.



You're going off on a tangent.

The question / issue here is that of *value*, which you're now having to *sidestep*.

[QUESTION #001] Does the company's office *staff* do work that produces *new values* for the company -- presumably from good-management -- or are new (commodity) values *expropriated* from the surplus labor value of the employed workers?

Sure, capital takes a risk in its ventures, and *labor* takes a risk with the everyday daily expenses and hazards involved in showing up for work.


ckaihatsu wrote:
but *I'll* simply ask why *labor* is being employed *at all* if all posited 'value' in the supply chains simply cascades-forward / feeds-forward like this, entirely *irrespective* of what labor / employees may happen to be doing.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because production does not work as you have described in the bolded clause. The factors of production that the producer arranges to apply to the production process -- natural resources, labor, and producer goods -- all contribute to the value of the product.



Can you give a rough *average* / estimate, maybe, of the *proportions* of natural resources, labor, and producer goods, by capital investment, respectively?


ckaihatsu wrote:
Do workers / employees have any material impact on the flows of value down the assembly lines, or is all value actually taking place solely in the office upstairs?



Truth To Power wrote:
All three factors contribute to the product, obviously. You know this. Why pretend you do not?



(See the previous segment.)
#15263561
ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll welcome any *examples*, or references, you may have here.



Truth To Power wrote:
:lol: :lol: Oh, for pity's sake. Are you seriously claiming not to know the fact that raw land has (often astronomical) exchange value??? Here:

https://www.landwatch.com/land



Your *entire politics* rests on your up-valuing of land that was forcibly taken from BIPOC / Native Americans, and given to land speculators at below-market prices.


https://www.progress.org/articles/histo ... peculation


ckaihatsu wrote:
Note, though, that *historically*, the *government* has provided the initial offering of land to *land speculators*:



Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. Land titles have been issued for many reasons, speculation being only one of them.



So then roughly what *percentage* of land issued would be to land speculators / 'flippers', and what percentage for 'other' reasons -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
TTP, at *this* point in things all *I* have to say is 'land needs landscaping',



Truth To Power wrote:
Which is a bald falsehood, as I have already proved. Our remote ancestors used land to survive for millions of years without landscaping it, and it never became private property until it already had exchange value. Land must already BE useful before it can BE landscaped, or have any value. See how that works?



You're conflating *use* value with *exchange* value -- as soon as a single person makes a single *modification* to the raw land, that's *labor*, confers exchange-value, suggests *pricing*, and turns it into a useable, saleable *commodity*.

Raw unlandscaped land is *not* hospitable / readily usable, and labor *is* typically applied to turn raw land into real estate. Please just stop.

You're *spitballing* and twisting and turning to try to justify 'raw land' as being some kind of universal / natural 'pass-through' value -- a 'holy' value from freaking God Himself.


ckaihatsu wrote:
and you're plumb out of luck.



Truth To Power wrote:
I'm not the one constantly making objectively and indisputably false claims, here. You are.



ckaihatsu wrote:
As soon as *any* rentier capital, like real estate, is built-up / developed, and provides use-value continuously, it's then 'automatic' in providing that service-value endlessly, all without requiring any human-labor inputs.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is just more absurd, anti-rational Marxist garbage contradicted by objective fact. While natural resources indeed do not need maintenance to retain their value -- which often increases without their owners lifting a finger -- any improvements most certainly do; and even when they are maintained, they will eventually depreciate and become worthless.



Sure, 'depreciation' / wear-and-tear -- (see 'wear, depletion' f.y.i., in the following model, 'below' the orange colored ring, flat on the ground).

What you're *missing* is that there's *no way* to rationally determine what each incremental *use* of an asset's automatic service is worth -- will it be operating for *10,000 duty cycles*, or only 8,000 -- ? And for how many *years* -- ? As a *customer* I'd like to know if I'm paying my fair proportional share, plus markup, according to what the machine *cost* to make for service.

'Improvements' are *also* non-commodity-productive *rentier*-type assets, so that's just more of the same, secondary to the real estate itself.


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
Image


https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The *point* of this, of course -- and especially since you're being so evasive



Truth To Power wrote:
That is another bald falsehood. I am striving mightily, though so far without success, to focus your attention on the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality, and it is you who are evading them by spewing obvious absurdities.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- is that it's automatically a *crisis* for '[exchange] value', because how the hell is anyone supposed to find a per-use 'value' / price for usage when there's no telling how many years the machine or device will be in service.



Truth To Power wrote:
People who are willing to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality (i.e., not you) can estimate the useful lifespan of improvements, and their expected depreciation.



But that's *circular* reasoning again -- is depreciation to be valued in *number of uses*, or in *exchange values* -- ? Could it be *both* -- ? How would those two types of values *correspond*, or *correlate*, exactly, if seen as long rows extending out, day-by-day -- ? Why is machine service on the *first* day charged the same price as machine service on the *20th year* of service -- ? What about functional / logistical / *material* depreciation, and how pricing corresponds, or does-not-correspond, to *that* -- !


ckaihatsu wrote:
When *labor* is actively involved there's a *standard* to go by, that of the per-hour *wage* rate.



Truth To Power wrote:
There is a standard in any case: what the market says.



ckaihatsu wrote:
But for a lump-sum *purchase* (building, laundromat, AI) that then parcels-out laborless automatic service over time, how can each portion of 'service' be appropriately *quantified* and commodified on any consistent basis -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
By the market. The purchase value of an input is based on what the market will pay for the output, not the other way around. That's Jevons's conclusive refutation of the Labor Theory of Value.



You *haven't* refuted the labor theory of value because you *acknowledge* that the material inputs are typically [1] natural resources, [2] labor, and [3] producer goods.

viewtopic.php?p=15262992#p15262992


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
How much labor *went into* the asset or resource, and why isn't resulting pricing based on those initial *production costs* (equity capital depreciation plus labor costs), parceled-out into proportionately-priced packets of automatic-service-value, with a proportionate per-portion markup.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because value is determined by supply and demand, not production cost. The production cost of raw land was $0. See above for how much it is now worth.



What about the U.S. government's costs of warfare, genocide, and 'clearing' the land for speculators and settlers -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
So *logistically* it's a *mess*, and is also along the lines of an economic 'market failure' -- supply-and-demand-type pricing *fails* when the 'supply' is unerringly available with negligible additional unit cost (as with providing laundromat machines, and/or digital copying, too).



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's nothing but absurd and anti-economic Marxist tripe contrary to objective fact.



*Or*:



What Is Marginal Cost?

In economics, the marginal cost is the change in total production cost that comes from making or producing one additional unit. To calculate marginal cost, divide the change in production costs by the change in quantity. The purpose of analyzing marginal cost is to determine at what point an organization can achieve economies of scale to optimize production and overall operations. If the marginal cost of producing one additional unit is lower than the per-unit price, the producer has the potential to gain a profit.



https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/ma ... uction.asp



---


Truth To Power wrote:
<absurd Marxist tripe mercifully snipped>
#15263575
Truth To Power wrote:
Forum rules unfortunately prohibit me from identifying ckaihatsu's claims for what they indisputably are. Readers should be able to figure it out, though:



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more false, absurd, and disingenuous tripe from you. There is nothing "circular" about the fact that increasing production by providing producer goods earns a return.



No, the 'circular reasoning' part is that the initial exchange-value valuation has nothing to *reference* -- it's a unique geographic parcel, at a different geographic location from *every other* parcel of land, so then how should it be valued, in *abstract* terms -- ?

You *can't* just say 'supply-and-demand', because no two parcels are the same in their raw state -- it's apples-and-oranges.

Sure, to the *buyer* there's *subjective* value there, but you didn't *say* that -- you said 'supply and demand', presumably meaning what actual prospective customers are willing to *pay* for 'x' plot of land, versus the *other* one, the 'y' plot of land, etc.

Does that mean that 'x' plot of land *is* worth the value of a fistful of dollars shaken at it -- ? What if the government has 'z' plot of land and lets it go at below-market rates? Are you in *agreement* with that kind of pricing-by-diktat approach -- ? *Really*?


ckaihatsu wrote:
So larger market cap



Truth To Power wrote:
It has nothing to do with market cap. Stop trying to change the subject every time I prove you objectively wrong -- which is always.



ckaihatsu wrote:
means larger *deals*



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just another ridiculous non sequitur fallacy from you. The size of the deals is utterly irrelevant. One customer buying 100 pizzas is a bigger deal than 1000 customers each buying one, but the volume is 10x bigger for the latter business. You are just trying to prevent yourself from knowing any relevant facts -- and with, I must concede, remarkable success.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- but where does the 'greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts' part come into play, that you're implicitly claiming, if not from the actual realtime exploitation of surplus labor value -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
From the increase in production the investor's contribution of producer goods causes. You just have to contrive some way to prevent yourself from knowing the fact that that increase comes from what the investor, not the worker, contributes.



That's *begging the question* -- either the added value is from [1] additional investment funds, or [2] an increase in the *exchange* value of the existing market capitalization, for whatever reasons.

*How*, exactly, does 'the increase in production' *happen* -- ?

You *are* implying / saying that the increase in production scales *linearly* to the market cap -- that's *bullshit* of course, since many other, *qualitative* factors enter into play, and the company's success or failure won't hinge on its *size*, as you're implying.

TLDR: 'Too big to fail.' (And then you're a *statist*.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's *capitalism* that gives us this realistically *absurd* scenario,



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not absurd, and it has nothing to do with capitalism. I have simply described a situation that could occur in any economy.



B.S. -- you're *devolving*, into an individual-business context / mindset, and no longer speaking about large-scale dynamics, that of *markets*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
where Abby / 'old money'



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more absurd and disingenuous garbage from you with no basis in fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
has a greater interest in *hanging on to outdated equipment*



Truth To Power wrote:
No she doesn't. You simply made that up. It's nothing but more of your usual anti-factual, anti-rational, anti-economic Marxist bull$#!+.



Just going by the scenario you introduced:



Abby's original wood-fired oven.



viewtopic.php?p=15262293#p15262293



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Don't you understand what it means when all you can ever offer is absurd and disingenuous garbage that no one of normal intelligence over the age of nine could possibly believe?



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- and *that's* assuming it can remain competitive for market share parallel to Ben's new electric oven.



'Market share' = piece-of-the-pie.


---


Pies Must Line Up

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Anti-economic gibberish.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Abby can either be Ben's employee for a necessarily-exploitative wage,



Truth To Power wrote:
There's nothing exploitative about it. You simply made that up. It's just more of your absurd, anti-economic Marxist garbage with no basis in fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
stick with *her own* means, the older wood-fired oven,



Abby's original wood-fired oven, versus Ben's new electric oven that can make *three times* as many pizzas -- and *still* 'old' / rentier-type money (Abby) has a greater interest in retaining their *own* means of mass production because they're effectively shut-out anyway from the *new* / Ben-owned means of mass production, the new electric oven, 'private property'.

Abby would be materially better-off as an owner of *older* technology, the wood-fired oven, than as a wage-earning *employee* of Ben's ownership of the *newer*, electric oven.


Truth To Power wrote:
Of course, she is free to decline the superior opportunity Ben offers. For example, if she is incredibly stupid, and believes brainless, anti-rational, anti-economic Marxist garbage, she might be able to persuade herself that doing the easier work of making pizzas rather than chopping wood and tending the fire is "exploitation." But realistically, very few people are that stupid.



You're *blustering* now, because Abby does *not* have a rational self-interest as a 'wage slave' / employee of Ben, instead of simply using the means of mass production / capital that she already owns, albeit for now-decreased market share versus her competitor, Ben.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If Abby is an *employee* of Ben and she does the same workday, she will *not* be allowed to handle the new daily revenue of $3000 per day, because her employer and husband Ben is the one who put up the $300 for the new electric pizza oven. She will *not* receive $400 in wages per day, nor *triple* that, due to the revenue tripling, because the $400 / $1200 number -- for profits -- is attributed wholly to the technological benefit / improvement of the *electric* oven, producing three times as many pizzas as Abby's original wood-fired oven.



viewtopic.php?p=15262698#p15262698


ckaihatsu wrote:
or somehow entreat her husband to stop being such a capitalist within the marriage / household



Truth To Power wrote:
You mean to stop making the household more productive and wealthier by contributing the producer goods that cause the increase in value it produces? Why would she be so stupid, anti-productive, and evil? She's not a Marxist, after all -- almost no working person ever has been.



The 'household' -- would she benefit, quantitatively, from her *marriage* to Ben, due to the improved, electric oven, or would Ben decide to treat the electric oven and business as *his*, privately -- ?

To put it another way, would Ben want the *household* to benefit from his investment idea / decision, or would he insist on reaping the *individual* rewards of his good-idea, which is so valuable *economically*, according to capitalism -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
and allow for the co-proprietorship thing (over a measly $300 oven).



Truth To Power wrote:
Why are you pretending that the amount of Ben's investment is relevant? It couldn't matter less if the new oven cost $300, $3K, $3M or $3. It is still HIS INVESTMENT that CAUSES the increase in value produced, not Abby's labor. It also couldn't matter less if Abby and Ben are co-proprietors or Abby is Ben's employee: it is still BEN, not ABBY who has CAUSED the increase in production by providing the new oven, and it is therefore nothing but a stupid, absurd, and dishonest anti-economic Marxist anti-concept to call the additional value produced by Ben's contribution surplus "labor" value.



But the new electric oven only cost $300 -- sure it caused a *tripling* in revenue and (presumably) profit, but *again* you're ignoring that Abby is still the laborer and that she now has to do *three times* the labor, albeit lessened compared to previously / originally.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Your 'boilerplate' treatment here is insufficient,



Truth To Power wrote:
No. The facts I identified prove me objectively right and you objectively wrong.



ckaihatsu wrote:
since it's clear that Ben would be *ripping Abby off* if they couldn't find business terms that were more equitable to each other's respective material positions.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it isn't. What's really clear is that you are just makin' absurd and disingenuous Marxist $#!+ up again. How could Ben possibly be "ripping Abby off" when nothing he has done has made her any worse off than if he had never existed?



Three times the *labor*, to make three times the number of pizzas.


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's even murky *ethical* terrain, arguably,



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it most certainly is not. You are just trying to pretend that good is evil and evil good.



ckaihatsu wrote:
since Abby could validly readily question why there isn't a more *qualitative* conversation going on, instead of the quick *bottom-lining* / fait-accompli -- with a rush to maintain and develop *existing* capital structures irrespective of any and all *other* directions of investment strategy.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, she most certainly could not. Abby could only question Ben's offer of access to better economic opportunity that she would not otherwise have had if she was a stupid, evil, lying piece of Marxist $#!+.



Where's the 'economic opportunity' for Abby, exactly -- is it through the *marriage* / household, because Ben doesn't seem to be otherwise *including* Abby in the results of his good business decision.

Abby would definitely make more money with her own, older, wood-fired oven, than strictly as an employee of Ben.


ckaihatsu wrote:
TLDR:



Truth To Power wrote:
It wasn't too long. I am very concise -- unlike people who post lengthy quotations of absurd and disingenuous Marxist gibberish.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Are Abby and Ben aiming to maximize *individual* returns on investment, or *joint* returns on investment?



Truth To Power wrote:
Both, because unlike stupid, evil, lying pieces of Marxist $#!+, they know there is no conflict between them.



It's *joint*, then.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Hypothetically, and myopically.



Truth To Power wrote:
No. Factually, and indisputably.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, all *hypothetical* -- was Abby even *asked* about any of this?



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not hypothetical. It's the actual history of how investors increase production. And whether Abby was asked or not is completely irrelevant to the fact that it is Ben's investment that has increased pizza production, not the magical appearance some "surplus" in the value of Abby's labor. If Abby doesn't want to produce more pizzas, Ben can find someone who is not a stupid, evil, lying sack of Marxist $#!+ to do her job.



Pizza production has increased threefold, so three times the original number of pizzas now need to be produced within the same workday, within the same job. Maybe Abby just wants to stick to her wood-fired oven as a *revenue* -- not wage -- producer, the means-of-mass-production.


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Wages' here actually means 'dividends' *or* 'wages', depending on whether Abby is cut-in or not on the 'co-proprietorship' legal entity.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it means what she is paid for her labor. If she is a co-owner, then that is a different income stream.



That's the *crux* of it -- will Abby be 'cut-in', into the new business, or is Ben going to be as insistent as *you*, in privatizing / individualizing the *benefits* of the new technology / technique -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
And, likewise, the *land* / real estate / 'rentier capital' would not be available if *it* had not been worked-on, by labor, to *commodify* it, to confer *use value*, for actual usability and exchangeability.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is just the same bald, absurd falsehood you have been repeating ad nauseam. Everyone reading this, including you, knows that raw land, which indisputably existed before any human being, WAS and IS already available for use, and has to already BE useful BEFORE it can be worked on by labor, and it is precisely the greater usefulness of specific PARCELS of RAW land that MAKEthem more suitable to be worked on than others that are less useful. None of this is disputable. You just have to deny it because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.



Pass. Even *assuming* your approach to valuation to be 'valid', you'd *still* be running into the problem of land / real-estate's inherent *rentier*-type exchange-value valuation -- once the raw land is *valuated*, as through an initial supply-and-demand-type exchange, what happens *then* -- ?

Let's say *all* land worldwide is completely untouched and in its original natural state -- after some time of land-for-land swaps and initial valuations, per-parcel, it's now *all* completely delineated into discrete parcels, and priced. Since you claim exchange value to be valid based sheerly on supply-and-demand dynamics, perhaps you'll be able to indicate what would happen *next*.

If private capital subsequently pours in, *raising* those per-parcel valuations, does that mean that the real estate somehow suddenly got *better* -- ? *Is* there any correlation between supply-and-demand market pricing and the underlying asset itself, meaning its *use* value -- ?

No, there is *not*, because of *this* economic empirical reality:


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying 'supply-and-demand', but you haven't addressed the point about this that I've raised previously, about money having to do a physically-impossible *triple-duty* of valuating these three *different* economic components: [1] manufacture, [2] supply-and-demand, and [3] the consumer's own subjective use-value, or 'utility'.



viewtopic.php?p=15253101#p15253101



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're *so close*



Truth To Power wrote:
Wish I could say the same...



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- if you can just alter your perception / perspective of this issue, to *generalize* from the localist *landowner*, to *all* landowner-like owners of rentier capital (all assets and resources, all necessarily non-commodity-productive), then you'd see that they're all identical *in function*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No I could not, because they are indisputably not, as I have proved to you many times. Natural resources were by definition already available for use with no help from their owners or any previous owner. Producer goods were not, because they had to be brought into existence by their initial owners and provided to the production process by their current owners. Every time you deny that self-evident and indisputable fact of objective physical reality, you only prove that your false and evil Marxist beliefs are more important to you than liberty, justice, the condition and prosperity of the working class, or the truth.



Natural resources, like land or a natural gas deposit, are *non-productive* of commodities, and that's why there's such an empirical *valuation problem* with it, as we're seeing with the current NATO destabilization of Russia's energy supply to Europe / Germany, for U.S. profiteering.



It was not until the current U.S.-NATO provoked war in Ukraine which resulted in the invasion by Russia on February 24, 2022 that the switch to U.S. LNG took off. Once the U.S. and NATO imposed sanctions upon Russia, Russia swiftly shut the spigot on NordStream 1, the major source of gas supply to Germany and much of Europe. The cost of natural gas skyrocketed with the 300% price increase accounting for 40% of inflation. This created a new situation for U.S.-sourced LNG.

LNG imports from the United States had doubled in just the year between August 2021 and August 2022 as the war was brewing. The U.S. boosted shipments to Europe such that by September 2022 when NordStream 1 was no longer operating, 70% of U.S. LNG exports were headed to Europe and more than 50% (half) of European imports of LNG came from the United States.



http://socialistorganizer.org/



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Land 'hosts' public infrastructure and government services.



Truth To Power wrote:
And the private owners of nearby land are privileged to charge everyone else for permission to access them.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Real estate' -- developed land -- hosts *private* infrastructure and *commercial* services.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, your claims are objectively false. Real estate includes raw, undeveloped land; and its differing physical qualities and access to services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities determine its value and what kind of labor and investment is most appropriately devoted to developing it.



As soon as raw land *is* labored-over, then it's no longer 'raw land' -- it's *real estate*.

And land typically *is* developed, with wage labor, to turn it into real-estate, with a rentier-capital-type exchange-value *valuation*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Communal laundromats 'host' clothes-cleaning infrastructure and government *provisioning* over such laundromat machines.



Truth To Power wrote:
And the machines are provided by government, which makes the service useful and worth paying for.



ckaihatsu wrote:
*Commercial* laundromats host clothes-cleaning infrastructure and 'fee-for-service', *for-profit* convenience, from *private ownership* of those machines.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because the private providers of the machines are the ones who make the service useful and worth paying for.



ckaihatsu wrote:
AI 'hosts' neural networks, trained or untrained, ready for limitless usage with given energy / electricity inputs.

The AI neural network itself could be 'public' / governmental, as at a college or university, or it could be *private*, as at a portal website, by subscription fee.



Truth To Power wrote:
And in either case, the usefulness of the hardware and software are provided by the investment that caused them to exist, not the "surplus value" of some wage worker who tightened a screw on it.



Incorrect, because the screws needed tightening, and the 'tightening' task requires the service labor of such an appropriate wage-worker, otherwise there *is no* hardware installed, and no AI.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Do these examples make the reality any *clearer* for you, TTP -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
I have made the reality crystal clear to you and everyone else reading this. I am not the one who can't find a willingness to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality, here. You are.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Endless laborless commodities / products / services *spring forth* from all of these *rentier*-type capital investments, and *yes*, including your favorite-example of 'land' / real estate, too.



Truth To Power wrote:
No they don't.



*Of course* they do -- ever hear of an *orchard* -- ?

(The proviso is that all such agricultural produce, like apples, are *not* equity-capital-leveraged produced *commodities* -- food is a resource *input* to active laboring *workers*, who *do* produce commodities, such as computer-hardware-installing *service* labor.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
Note that while end-user / customer *use-value* is being provided by all the examples here, actual *commodities* *aren't*, strictly speaking, since commodity-production necessarily requires *wage labor* -- otherwise there's no actual *circulation* / economic social-organization taking place, as through publicly-available pooled joint-stock equity investments, for the production of commodities (goods and services).



Truth To Power wrote:
That is absurd Marxist gibberish with no relation to economic reality.



The rentier-capital-based automatic services provided, like machine laundering, are actually *resources*, like apples from a tree. Clean clothes and food are resource *inputs* to workers, who are then materially 'enabled' to do wage labor, *for* actual commodity production.


ckaihatsu wrote:
The closed-loop of fee-for-service -- like clean clothes from a laundromat machine -- means that *deflation* (corraled valuations of separate, distinct assets and resources) is necessarily underway, with *increasing* asset valuations of the (laundromat) business as revenue streams in over time, all without the expense of labor costs.



Truth To Power wrote:
That is absurd Marxist gibberish with no relation to economic reality. The machines will depreciate over time as they wear out, and labor is required to maintain them.



Suddenly you're concerned with *production cost* / value -- ?

This flip-flopping, from one kind of valuation to another over the same quantity of *rentier capital* (the laundromat), shows you the clear distinction between *non-commodity-productive*, *rentier*-type capital -- a laundry machine -- and *commodity-productive*, *equity*-type capital -- a widget-making machine -- that *requires* labor-power inputs, or wage-workers.


Truth To Power wrote:
Almost everything you say on this subject is just objectively false.



ckaihatsu wrote:
So -- in what other aspect of daily real life would we ever find a pool of 'x' value that simply *gains* in monetary value (minus depreciation) *all by itself*, from the incoming revenue stream, and without any continuous ongoing labor-value inputs -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Land, which does not depreciate but appreciates, and requires no labor input from its owner to make him rich.



Now it's back to [2] supply-and-demand-type pricing, based on market speculation, and not on underlying use / utility value. Correct?


ckaihatsu wrote:
The rentier-asset revenue stream is *not* from the machine producing discrete *commodities* -- because that would require *labor*, and labor-hour-wage-based *continuous valuations*, for commodity-production *new exchange values*.



Truth To Power wrote:
Gibberish.



Rentier capital provides assets and *resources*, like food grown or clothes cleaned. Such resources are for the sake of *people*, and for workers, necessarily producing *new* commodities and *new* values.


ckaihatsu wrote:
No new exchange values are produced by *rentier* capital (land, etc.), though, because the end-user / customer fee for service has to be *pre-existing* value in the economy, as with rent from either equity capital, or from the worker.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's false, and only proves you don't understand any economics.



It's called 'rent-seeking' / 'coupon-clipping'. No new values are being created.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Rentier, necessarily-non-commodity-productive assets and resources only *drain* the economy of value and circulation -- such rentier assets are *deflationary sinkholes* in the overall economy.



Truth To Power wrote:
Gibberish with no discernible relation to fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Who paid the mortgage for the land / real estate that the pizzeria sits on, and who holds the *title* to that real estate -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
How could that possibly be relevant to the fact that Ben's contribution of the new oven, not any magical "surplus" in the value of Abby's labor, greatly increased the pizzeria's production of value?



What about the tripling of the *pizzas*, requiring a tripling of the *labor* to *make* the increased sales, and sales revenue -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's *another* form of rentier capital, land, which was definitely *not* in its raw, natural state when the pizzeria building was plopped down onto the site.



Truth To Power wrote:
Sure it was. The previous improvements were removed, and then the site sat vacant and overgrown for 30 years before the pizzeria owners provided the building.



'Previous improvements' implies *initial* labor used to make the site appropriately useful, and also *additional* labor, for the 'improvements'. The use of *any* labor, even the slightest, effectively *commodifies* the raw land in an instant since *production costs* (capital + labor) determine the initial valuation of the formerly-raw-land, now-real-estate, as with any *other* commodity, like those that roll off the assembly line at a factory.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Therefore the 'land' that the building sits on first required *capital investment*, for *landscaping*, as with any other rentier-capital asset or resource.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it didn't. The pizzeria owners acquired it in its unimproved state. You are just repeating the same bald falsehood you have already seen proved false many times.



(See the previous segment.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
And, who does the labor to make the actual pizzas?



Truth To Power wrote:
Abby, using the equipment Ben provided, which greatly increases the value her contribution adds to.



Does she / you know that now triple *the work* will be involved, to make triple the original number of *pizzas* -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
If the output of pizzas has *tripled* due to the new electric oven, the *labor* involved in that process will be triple as well



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I already proved that is false.



No, you haven't -- see the previous segment.


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- Abby would have a personal individual interest in the *co-proprietorship* vehicle at this point, instead of working three times as hard for the same unchanged wage rate as before.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, she's not working three times as hard. That's just another bald fabrication on your part. She's simply spending more time making pizzas because she no longer has to chop wood and tend the fire.



Granted, but what about the bulk increase in the number of *pizzas* being made -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
B.S.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- land does *not* have to 'already be usable'.



Truth To Power wrote:
It most certainly does. How could anyone use it to make improvements if it were not already usable, hmmmmm?



Red herring, due to catch-22.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Land is *transformed* as a matter of course, to *make* it usable and saleable, like *any other* form of rentier capital like gemstones or AI neural networks.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, you are just repeating the same bald, outright falsehood I have already proved false many times. Raw land is ALREADY salable, and must ALREADY BE usable BEFORE it can be transformed. It already exists, with no help from its owner or any previous owner. Gemstones and AI networks do not. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way of identifying that fact for you so that you would find a willingness to know it.



(See the previous points about this.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
No



Truth To Power wrote:
Yes. You are just denying indisputable facts.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- in the U.S. the government provided initial land offerings at *below market* rates, based on *favoritism*.



Truth To Power wrote:
Much as almost all governments that have ever issued private land titles have done.



Then you're a *statist*, because you've abandoned the 'free market' as a source for economic valuations, in favor of allowing the *government* to dictate such prices. No set systematic *standards* are involved with statism -- it's bureaucratic elitism, or 'Stalinism'.


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Historically, the government provided the initial offering of land to *land speculators*:



Truth To Power wrote:
That is completely irrelevant to the FACT that raw land often changes hands for astronomical sums, proving me objectively right and you objectively wrong.



Truth To Power wrote:
Don't you understand what it means when the facts of objective physical reality always prove you wrong?



(See the segment about pricing 'triple-duty'.)


---


Truth To Power wrote:
All of them contribute to value produced. The owners of the washing machines and factory contribute them to production, as they would not otherwise have been available. It is just the land's owner who doesn't contribute, but merely pockets the value of the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location, while contributing nothing himself.



ckaihatsu wrote:
That's not really correct



Truth To Power wrote:
It is most certainly and indisputably correct.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- you seem to think that land ownership confers some kind of *total social authority* within those bounds, even over government spending, the persons on that land, and all natural resources there as well.



Truth To Power wrote:
It confers the legal entitlement to charge others full market value for permission to access the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Your 'totality' social conception here resembles *feudalism* more than anything *modern*, with *civil rights*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, you made that up. I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality.



Misread. Never mind.
#15263628
ckaihatsu wrote:'Produce' -- is that white-collar, pink-collar, and/or blue-collar labor -- ?

It could be any combination thereof, because the fact -- which you are trying so hard to evade -- is that at bottom it's the entrepreneur's labor of arranging for all the production factors to be applied to the production process, thus causing the product to exist. By causing the product to exist, he obtains rightful property in it without abrogating anyone else's rights.
('Trade' implies no-new-value-created /

No it doesn't. That's just another bald falsehood from you.
only-fees-and-costs / 'transaction costs',

That is nothing but absurd Marxist blather contrary to fact.
while 'produce' implies 'new stuff made', or 'service rendered to you in person'.)

No it doesn't. It just means "relieve scarcity." Which consensual trade does.
*Do* owners typically create / produce *new values*, though

They indisputably do when they provide means of production -- producer goods -- that would not otherwise have been available to the producer, who may or may not own any of the means of production.
-- I think it's more like internal paper-shuffling and the digital coin-counting of the day's take.

But that just proves you don't know anything about production, have -- like most
Marxists -- probably never engaged in it, and have decided never to know anything about it.
You're going off on a tangent.

No I'm not. That is nothing but another bald falsehood from you. I am identifying the indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove your absurd Marxist tripe is absurd Marxist tripe.
The question / issue here is that of *value*, which you're now having to *sidestep*.

No. That is nothing but another bald falsehood from you. I have sidestepped nothing, but have striven to direct your attention to the relevant facts of objective physical reality, and identify your disingenuous denials thereof. You are the one sidestepping every proof that you are objectively wrong, as all readers are invited to confirm.
[QUESTION #001] Does the company's office *staff* do work that produces *new values* for the company -- presumably from good-management -- or are new (commodity) values *expropriated* from the surplus labor value of the employed workers?

Only someone who has never engaged in productive labor could ask such a question. Staff workers do work that enables production of value by line workers.
Sure, capital takes a risk in its ventures,

You are again just trying to evade the fact that ownership of the means of production ("capital") is not the contractual role of the producer, who arranges for all the means of production to be applied to the production process. The Marxist axiom that ownership of the means of production confers ownership of the product is just baldly false.
and *labor* takes a risk with the everyday daily expenses and hazards involved in showing up for work.

Wrong. Labor is pretty sure of getting paid for its contribution and compensated for the risks it takes by working. The producer, by contrast, has no such guarantee. He assumes the full risk of loss.
Can you give a rough *average* / estimate, maybe, of the *proportions* of natural resources, labor, and producer goods, by capital investment, respectively?

It depends entirely on the product, the economic, regulatory, and market environments, the production process, etc. For a modern capitalist economy, the contributions might average out to very roughly 1/4 natural resource rents, 1/2 labor, and 1/4 producer goods. But there are many other factors involved.
#15263639
Forum rules prohibit me to identify ckaihatsu's statements for what they indisputably are, but astute readers will be able to figure it out.
ckaihatsu wrote:Your *entire politics* rests on your up-valuing of land that was forcibly taken from BIPOC / Native Americans, and given to land speculators at below-market prices.

No it doesn't. You are just makin' $#!+ up again, as usual. It has nothing to do with BIPOC or Native Americans. The issues are exactly the same all over the world, and for all of history.

<absurd, irrelevant Marxist garbage snipped>
So then roughly what *percentage* of land issued would be to land speculators / 'flippers', and what percentage for 'other' reasons -- ?

It's completely irrelevant, as irrelevant as how much of it is at elevation less than 100m and how much between 100m and 200m, etc.
You're conflating *use* value with *exchange* value

No I'm not, you are. I am stating the FACT that VALUE IS exchange value, and what you call "use value" is utility: the capacity to satisfy human desires. Utility affects the demand side of supply and demand, that's all.
-- as soon as a single person makes a single *modification* to the raw land, that's *labor*, confers exchange-value, suggests *pricing*, and turns it into a useable, saleable *commodity*.

No, that's just the same baldly false claim you have been making all along. It is just indisputably false as a matter of objective physical fact. Raw land must already be usable before it can be used, modified, improved, etc. by labor; it was ALREADY a usable resource when the first human being saw it; and it became a salable commodity with exchange value as soon as it was appropriated as private property, before any labor was ever expended on it. You just have to refuse to know these facts, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.
Raw unlandscaped land is *not* hospitable / readily usable,

Yes it is. That is why it often trades for astronomical sums, proving you objectively wrong. That is why our remote ancestors used it to survive for millions of years, proving you objectively wrong.
and labor *is* typically applied to turn raw land into real estate.

No, that is again just objectively false. Raw land is ALREADY real estate BEFORE any labor is applied to it, and how much and what kind of labor can best be applied to it to realize its productive potential is determined by how useful it ALREADY IS for various purposes.

Please just stop making the same indisputably false claims over and over again after you have seen them proved false multiple times.
You're *spitballing* and twisting and turning

Your claims are bald and despicable falsehoods. You are the one twisting, turning and evading, and you know it.
to try to justify 'raw land' as being some kind of universal / natural 'pass-through' value -- a 'holy' value from freaking God Himself.

No, you simply made that up. I am just identifying the indisputable fact of objective physical reality that raw land has exchange value without any labor having been expended on it, thanks to the desirable public services and infrastructure government has provided, the opportunities and amenities the community has provided, and the physical qualities nature has provided at that location BEFORE any labor is applied to it. You have merely been denying that fact because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil. You have to deny objective facts because the preservation of your false and evil beliefs is more important to you than liberty, justice, improving the material condition of the working class, or the truth.
Sure, 'depreciation' / wear-and-tear -- (see 'wear, depletion' f.y.i., in the following model, 'below' the orange colored ring, flat on the ground).

Which proves me objectively right and you objectively wrong. Inevitably.
What you're *missing* is that there's *no way* to rationally determine what each incremental *use* of an asset's automatic service is worth -- will it be operating for *10,000 duty cycles*, or only 8,000 -- ? And for how many *years* -- ?

No. What YOU are missing is that producers do that all the time, every time they buy and sell such assets.
As a *customer* I'd like to know if I'm paying my fair proportional share, plus markup, according to what the machine *cost* to make for service.

No, that's just more absurd garbage from you. As a customer, the cost of the machine is completely irrelevant to you. It doesn't matter if the owner bought it for $1M, won it in a poker game, or found it in his grandmother's attic, because the price of the service is determined by supply and demand, not production cost. That is the fact that proves the Labor Theory of Value is objectively false.
'Improvements' are *also* non-commodity-productive *rentier*-type assets, so that's just more of the same, secondary to the real estate itself.

No, that's just another objectively false claim from you. Improvements provided by their owner enable more productive use of the land. They add to production, and unlike the land, would not otherwise have been available.

<false, absurd and disingenuous Marxist tripe snipped>
But that's *circular* reasoning again

No it isn't, any more than the first one was.
-- is depreciation to be valued in *number of uses*, or in *exchange values* -- ?

Depreciation is only measured in exchange value.
Could it be *both* -- ?

No.
How would those two types of values *correspond*, or *correlate*, exactly, if seen as long rows extending out, day-by-day -- ?

:roll: Take an introductory course in math of finance. Or watch half a dozen youtube videos on the subject, so you are at least exposed to the basics even if you refuse to learn any of them.
Why is machine service on the *first* day charged the same price as machine service on the *20th year* of service -- ?

Supply and demand.
What about functional / logistical / *material* depreciation, and how pricing corresponds, or does-not-correspond, to *that* -- !

:roll: What about you find a willingness to know the fact that the kind of people who are buying and selling such items have those jobs because they know what they are doing, and you do not because you do not?
You *haven't* refuted the labor theory of value because you *acknowledge* that the material inputs are typically [1] natural resources, [2] labor, and [3] producer goods.

Wrong. Like Jevons, I have refuted the Labor Theory of Value because I have identified the fact that value is determined by supply and demand, not production cost.
What about the U.S. government's costs of warfare, genocide, and 'clearing' the land for speculators and settlers -- ?

:roll: That was the cost of establishing the privilege of owning the land, not of producing the land. Establishing a privilege is not production because it inflicts scarcity rather than relieving it.

GET IT??

<fallacious, absurd, irrelevant and disingenuous Marxist bull$#!+ snipped>
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