Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:But long-term averages show the tendency to settle around a price in many cases.
1) All it means is that you are capable of taking an average. It doesn't mean that price is an attractor.
It could also mean two completely different things: a.) if you have lets say a 100 year period, take any 30 year average and compare this with two other 30 year averages. Look where the tendency lies. b.) it means that what comes up must go down. The attractor is not an absolute constant however, it's only meant to be free of demand and supply equilibria. It might have slower movements and developments.
2) 'in many cases'? What a ringing endorsement of the idea that all commodities have a 'natural price'.
Again you ignore Marx his "provisions and exceptions". If you're gonna critique the theory, try a bit of effort. Now you're forcing me in 'defender' mode while I just want to explain and better understand the theory in doing so. Or you prefer making people into 'defenders' so you can call them a name, put them into a category of some kind? Hm? So far my goal is to attack the ignorance of the theory I see here exposed and to learn from it, spreading the wealth in the process.
3) natural price as minimum price of commodity production labor (i.e. for the low-hanging fruit of commodities) by definition doesn't work for any commodity which isn't absolutely overwhelmingly available.
There are specific conditions for a labor-product to be called a commodity in the abstract sense of the theory. I bet you don't know that.
To believe in those just because it hasn't been disproven is religious faith. You know, just like marxism.
So do you admit now it hasn't been really disproven? That's correct because what happened that it has been abandoned, marginalized or as a Marxist would say ignored. The rejecting was a lack of perceived use-value as the new goal was to modernize capitalism and market processes, and the value of looking beyond that was questioned. But that's why it always pops up again during some crisis :)
Yes, entire industries might die -- and in the long run, the whole world will be better off.
But you must then also agree that national boundaries, nation-states are void in a global super-capitalist system?
No, dude, capital would migrate into other things we do better. Our government protects those uncompetitive industries because they have small but vocal political participation, while the great unwashed masses, who pay excessively for steel, cars, and electronics, don't generally voice themselves on this matter.
This would be an interesting discussion, where it would migrate to. But it's too much off-two-topics.
Man, you know very little about economics, huh? This issue has been understood two centuries ago, by one David Ricardo. it's called comparative advantage. A globalized economy would end up producing that which it's best at, no matter where the absolute advantage lies.
Yeah, that same guy who came up with 'natural prices' showing up in the long run, the ones you're so ranting about. It must have been a very smart guy or he had a few things accidentally right ;) But the problem with all purely economical theories which include globalism is that they don't touch the whole social issue, the whole human dimension that is crucial in estimating the effects.
You can't both believe that free market will make the workers better off, and that free market will only keep exacerbating the workers' exploitation.
That's a limitation only you suffer. A free market is not a static entity, not an idea that remains working exactly the same every time you flick the switch. You work too much with computers! :)
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vicdan
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It could also mean two completely different things: a.) if you have lets say a 100 year period, take any 30 year average and compare this with two other 30 year averages. Look where the tendency lies.
OK, go ahead, do this. Without picking-and-choosing which commodity you are going to look at.
Now you're forcing me in 'defender' mode
You already are there.
There are specific conditions for a labor-product to be called a commodity in the abstract sense of the theory.
yeah, it has to be uniform. that doesn't mean it can't have different productions costs in different areas, it just means the consumer doesn't give a flying fuck how the said commodity was produced. Light crude is light crude, whether it was extracted at $5/bbl or $15/bbl. The point is that the price of $5/bbl, despite being the 'labor cost floor' you are talking about, will almost never actually make a showing in the real world.
So do you admit now it hasn't been really disproven?
of course not. What I am saying is that even by your own standards marxism lacks support, so accepting it, by your own standards, is an act of faith.
But you must then also agree that national boundaries, nation-states are void in a global super-capitalist system?
Not at all. The only thing standing between the current globalized system and a real globalized system is free movement of labor. That won't necessarily lead to homogeneity. EU has open migration across borders, but member nation-states generally retain their national character. This might change after a while, but it's certainly not an inevitable outcome of globalization. In fact, we will probably want to establish policies to prevent homogenization of the population without legally strangling migration, simply because monoculture is death. Heterogeneity is a good thing.
Yeah, that same guy who came up with 'natural prices' showing up in the long run, the ones you're so ranting about. It must have been a very smart guy or he had a few things accidentally right ;)
Darwin got some things right and some things wrong. So did Newton, Kepler, and Einstein. His development of the theory of comparative advantage is the thing Ricardo is most famous for, because that's the thing he got right.
But the problem with all purely economical theories which include globalism is that they don't touch the whole social issue, the whole human dimension that is crucial in estimating the effects.
'purely economic theories' often include the psychological dimension, at least if they are any good. For example, consider the widely recognized notion of wage stickiness, or Friedman's application of rational expectations to inflation.
You can't both believe that free market will make the workers better off, and that free market will only keep exacerbating the workers' exploitation.
That's a limitation only you suffer.
yeah, I have trouble believing mutually contradictory things.

the bottom line:

1) There is no such thing as a natural price. it's a meaningless notion.

2) Value is a function of relations between consumers and consumables, not a property of consumables.

3) Marx got the shape of future history totally wrong.
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Leyla Shen
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Leyla Shen »

Victor, try to stay focused, will you.
L: 1.Nature (as opposed to ideas) as the source of wealth (including, of course, human labour-power).

V: BS right off the bat, unless you are so dishonest as to count intellectual labor (i.e. source of ideas) as the 'nature' in question, in which case of course the posited 'nature vs. ideas' dichotomy was never valid in the first place.

You wouldn't happen to be trying one of those dumb definitional arguments again, would you?

The key problem here is the nature of arbitrage. The value of arbitrage, of which trade is a special case, is the value of information -- ideas.

L: Ye fucking gods, man—you can’t be serious! That’s not the source of wealth, arbitrage and trade is the manipulation of it!

V: Consider this simple example. What is the worth of a pile of coal, sulphur, and saltpeter to a medieval warlord? How about if the pile comes with a gunpowder recipe? Just information -- but information which radically creates value. […]

[…] The merchant who brings the chickens over to a starving village creates wealth by simply manipulating things.
No, he doesn’t manipulate things. He manipulates a wealth of things (just like the capitalist, by definition and in reality, manipulates labour power). If he figures out that there are 100,000 chickens in three different villages and none in another, he has manipulated the wealth of the three in order to satisfy a need in the fourth and, in doing so, his ideas and actions (labour—actual activity, physical and mental) have use value (that is, they can be used to satisfy a need). Let’s say he’s also an experienced chicken farmer and he teaches them how to keep and breed the chickens for meat and eggs because there aren’t nearly enough to feed them all at once. His work specifically in this regard has use value, too.

Now, these villagers happen to be in a location relatively rich with unusual gems. But they have to go to amazing lengths to mine them (again, labour) for trade since these gems don’t really satisfy their more pressing needs (hunger). In exchange for his labour, the merchant accepts a trade in gems for his work and they go about deciding just how many gems his labour (use value) is worth in relation to the labour (use value) of the villagers (exchange value—commoditisation). The distinction—Marx’s very own, in fact (see abstract & concrete labour)—appears subtle, but is actual and insightful. Suddenly, the value of villager labour that went into mining the gems and the merchant’s labour into handling poultry logistics need to be quantified for the purposes of trade.

This is the character and feature of Marx’s LTV and his critique of economics, his critique of “the abstracted away feature” of supply and demand in modern economics—social relations as the standardisation and quantification of labour power in the form a commodity. This is exactly what makes it a matter of political economy, rather than one of “pure, abstract economics.” It drives the very relations between people and NATIONS (which is why, actually, the matter is pertinent to this thread—quite telling how this fact is lost on certain participants to this thread).

How you think that logically reduces down to “noumenal delusion” whilst alluding to the exclusion of the capitalist from such delusion is pure, religious fantasy. You're a fucking fundy of the highest order!
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Leyla Shen
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Leyla Shen »

Unidian wrote:
Fuck off, you petty, spineless little parasite.
LOL. Try decaffienated, hon. And maybe a Midol.

BTW, to be called a "parasite" by a Marxist is definitely a new (and amusing) one. Chuckles abound. You should work on those anger issues, though. Meanwhile, I think you're buying me a twinkie, proletarian comrade. Viva la revolucion!

Hysterics of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your temper!
Twinkie? Socialism doesn’t require a complete lack of standards, you know. No wonder the world is still fucked up despite it.

Go away, flea, before you get squashed between my fingernails.
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vicdan
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Leyla Shen wrote:No, he doesn’t manipulate things. He manipulates a wealth of things
he manipulates things. Taking the goods from one place, where they are in abundance, and shipping them to another, where they are in short supply, is manipulating things -- a manipulation which crteates wealth.
(just like the capitalist, by definition and in reality, manipulates labour power). If he figures out that there are 100,000 chickens in three different villages and none in another, he has manipulated the wealth
he has manipulated chickens.
Now, these villagers happen to be in a location relatively rich with unusual gems. But they have to go to amazing lengths to mine them (again, labour) for trade since these gems don’t really satisfy their more pressing needs (hunger). In exchange for his labour, the merchant accepts a trade in gems for his work and they go about deciding just how many gems his labour (use value) is worth in relation to the labour (use value) of the villagers (exchange value—commoditisation). The distinction—Marx’s very own, in fact (see abstract & concrete labour)—appears subtle, but is actual and insightful. Suddenly, the value of villager labour that went into mining the gems and the merchant’s labour into handling poultry logistics need to be quantified for the purposes of trade.
That's the beauty of is, girlie. It doesn't need to be quantified in the general sense. The villagers decide what pay function they can offer and how their labor is best used. the merchant tries to sell the gems as best as he can, in the process presenting the villagers with a demand function. The merchant doesn't give a fuck how much a villager's labor is worth. what he cares about is what pay villagers will accept for gems. Villagers decide what pay schedule they will accept (and how high a pay they can get away with charging).
This is the character and feature of Marx’s LTV and his critique of economics, his critique of “the abstracted away feature” of supply and demand in modern economics—social relations as the standardisation and quantification of labour power in the form a commodity.
yeah, yeah, commoditization of labor. That's a good thing, because that's what makes economic problems tractable, and therefore reasonably optimizable. Take away this abstraction, and economic optimization instantly becomes impossible because of the overabundance of 'properties' (which are used to 'fake' relations) I mentioned earlier. This intractability is the cause of the planned economy's failure: because the moment you abandon the purely local optimization of the markets, the moment you stop simply being an entity which responds to abstract price signals, economic optimization becomes intractable.

The very fact you complain about -- commoditization of labor -- is what makes it possible for economic agents to be purely local, responding to abstract price signals. As long as you just treat price as a number, you simply accept a set of input values, and you produce a set of output values. The moment you take that abstraction away, you experience exponential explosion in complexity, because how each number is no longer just a number, but an entity which must be considered on its own terms.

Under supply/demand model, the merchant, when talking to the gem-mining villagers, only cares about one thing: what sort of pay they want? and on the other end, he cares about only one thing: what sort of price he can get by selling the gems? if he has to start caring about the value of miners' labor, and the worth of jewelers' labor, etc., he will be overwhelmed with useless information, and unable to do his optimizing job; and this gets infinitely worse when you move the decision locus up the hierarchy, away from local economic agents.
How you think that logically reduces down to “noumenal delusion”
By dint of the fact that the labor's value is assumed to be a property of labor, rather than of the relationship between labor supplier and albor consumer. Same as with LTV in general.
whilst alluding to the exclusion of the capitalist from such delusion is pure, religious fantasy. You're a fucking fundy of the highest order!
meaning, unlike you, i deal with reality of how economy actually works.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Unidian »

Good lord, who doesn't like Twinkies?
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Unidian wrote:Good lord, who doesn't like Twinkies?
Sir,is that going to be in the exam?
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Leyla Shen wrote:Go away, flea, before you get squashed between my fingernails.
Someone has serious power issues. :) And here I thought my ego was bad...
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by brokenhead »

vicdan wrote:Under supply/demand model, the merchant, when talking to the gem-mining villagers, only cares about one thing: what sort of pay they want? and on the other end, he cares about only one thing: what sort of price he can get by selling the gems? if he has to start caring about the value of miners' labor, and the worth of jewelers' labor, etc., he will be overwhelmed with useless information, and unable to do his optimizing job; and this gets infinitely worse when you move the decision locus up the hierarchy, away from local economic agents.
This is kind of like the OSI model of TCP/IP for the exchange of information instead of goods and services. There is the notion of the interface. That is, the merchant correctly acts within his sphere and responds only to the constraints and demands of that role, much like information passes from one layer of the OSI model to the other, indifferent to the inner functions of the others and concentrating instead on the required form of the information at the corresponding interfaces at both input and output.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Yup, that's pretty much it. Abstraction is a very powerful paradigm which is applicable to many spheres of human endeavor, and what it accomplishes is precisely that -- the ability to render a difficult problem [relatively] easy, by permitting modularity. Modular design is what cuts down on the complexity explosion, turning exponential complexity growth into, at most, polynomial complexity growth.

Without modularity, a change anywhere can create an effect anywhere else; thus, the set of possible problems is a powerset of the entire set of system elements. You add one element, and the size of potential problem set doubles. Modularity does away with that. The problem set growth is still exponential for each module, but (1) the modules are much smaller, and (2) they can usually be modularized further.

Of course the problem has to be amenable to the abstraction paradigm, which not all problems are. Sometimes obsession with abstraction and modularity actually gets in the way and impedes progress; but not in economy's case. For economy, the price-as-signal abstraction is exactly what makes it possible for the economic outcome to be relatively close to optimal: all optimization takes place locally, encased in the clean abstraction paradigm.

The merchant doesn't care about how the worker valuates their labor -- the worker does. Furthermore, if the merchant had to care about it, why stop at the worker? if worker's labor valuation matters in itself, then so does the valuation of the mining tools supplier who equips the worker, the food grower who feeds the worker, the labor valuation of the tailor who clothes him, etc.

Instant exponential complexity explosion, just add stupidity of marxism!
Last edited by vicdan on Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Unidian »

Yes, your account will most likely be banned. Besides, ever since Jagex implemented the trade changes a while back, you really can't buy and sell Runescape gold effectively anyway. Unless you have a ton of quest points, your ability to trade is going to be capped at 5-10k every 15 minutes, and nobody is going to bother real-world trading for hours to transfer a measly 100k.

But since you are actually just here to spam and rip people off on phony RS trades that won't even work, please vacate the premises. Take it from a level 98 player with millions in the bank and a santa hat. You fail at Runescape.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Leyla Shen »

Don’t be so bloody stupid!
LS: No, he doesn’t manipulate things. He manipulates a wealth of things

VD: he manipulates things. Taking the goods from one place, where they are in abundance, and shipping them to another, where they are in short supply, is manipulating things -- a manipulation which crteates wealth.
All goods that have exchange value (commodities) represent WEALTH. Why? Because they have flippen exchange value! The wealth exists by virtue of the fact that someone has it and someone else needs or wants it. The merchant, by definition, doesn’t CREATE this wealth, he necessarily manipulates it—he, by definition and in reality, facilitates the fulfillment of a need (scarcity) in a specific area and negotiates PROFIT through price. THAT’s ALL he does.
LS: (just like the capitalist, by definition and in reality, manipulates labour power). If he figures out that there are 100,000 chickens in three different villages and none in another, he has manipulated the wealth [of the three in order to satisfy a need in the fourth and, in doing so, his ideas and actions (labour—actual activity, physical and mental) have use value (that is, they can be used to satisfy a need). Let’s say he’s also an experienced chicken farmer and he teaches them how to keep and breed the chickens for meat and eggs because there aren’t nearly enough to feed them all at once. His work specifically in this regard has use value, too.]

VD: he has manipulated chickens.
I mean, seriously—wh-a-a-a-t? Manipulated chickens?? He hasn’t done anything to chickens, only to the supply of chickens! [laughs] I can’t believe we’re having this discussion.
That explains everything, and gives us a great deal of insight into your married life, too! Tell me, when you pleasure your wife, are you manipulating her body by shipping it off to be serviced by someone else?

See above!
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Leyla Shen wrote:All goods that have exchange value (commodities) represent WEALTH. Why? Because they have flippen exchange value!
Right. And their flippin exchange value varies depending on context. So if the merchant bought 10 chickens from a village where they sell for $10 each, and sold them in a village where they sell for $11 each, he has just created at least $10 of WEALTH.

See, dummy, when the merchant bought the chickens for $100, the villagers exchanged <$100 worth of chickens for $100. In turn he sold those same chickens for $110 to the villagers who get >$110 of value out of them.

In this trivial example, the merchant simply pockets the difference -- $10 -- while the villagers in both villages are somewhat better off; because, assuming rational market agents, free trade only occurs when it is beneficial to both sides. Thus the chickens were actually worth slightly less than $100 to the villagers, and they got $100 for them, which trade created some amount of wealth. In turn in the second village, the chickens were worth somewhat more than $110, else the villagers wouldn't have bothered to go to the market, so the second trade also left the villagers better off.

In this example, all three parties -- villagers in each village, and the merchant -- are better off. Each one of them is wealthier than they were before, even though all that happened was arbitrage. The merchant has created wealth -- for himself and for the villagers.

if you want to quantify it further, suppose the chickens are worth $9 to the villagers in the first village, and $12 in the second village (each group of villagers does the trade because it leaves them better off, i.e. they are better off holding $10 than a chicken in the first village, and better off holding a chicken than $11 in the second village). Before the transaction, the wealth in question stood as follows:

Village #1: $90 worth of chickens
Village #2: $110
Merchant: $100
Total wealth: $300

After the transaction, wealth stands as follows:

Village #1: $100
Village #2: $120 worth of chickens
Merchant: $110
Total wealth: $330

The merchant has created $30 of wealth -- a 10% increase -- via arbitrage.

This concludes our kindergarten-level economics lesson for today.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by guest_of_logic »

Nice post, Vic. I find your example scenario relevant to the need for constant economic growth under modern capitalism (I don't actually understand why this need exists, but that's another issue - although if you have an explanation I'd be interested). A lot of people (me too, at times) are uncomfortable with this need, due to the finitude of natural resources on Earth. I independently realised that the counter to this discomfort is the recognition that wealth (value) is constantly being created in many different ways, and your simple example demonstrates yet another way.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

guest_of_logic wrote:Nice post, Vic. I find your example scenario relevant to the need for constant economic growth under modern capitalism (I don't actually understand why this need exists, but that's another issue - although if you have an explanation I'd be interested).
There is no such need. There is such want, because people want more than they have. Transform us into a culture of ascetics, and this will change. Until then, if we can create wealth, we will create wealth.
A lot of people (me too, at times) are uncomfortable with this need, due to the finitude of natural resources on Earth.
This is the malthusian error I speak so often about. Malthus had assumed that human population grows exponentially but resources do not. What he forgot is that the greatest resource of them all is the human mind -- and that one actually grows faster than the population, because we are getting smarter, more knowledgable, and thus better able to utilize our collective cognitive capacity.

Fiber-optic cables conduct information faster than copper, and we make them from fucking sand (with some trace metal additions). Genetically engineered plants yield larger harvests at lower costs. We already have the ability to grow biomass -- even meat -- in a vat. Give it a couple of decades, and we will probably have commercial fusion power, making energy from hydrogen, the most abundant substance in the Universe (well, its heavy isotopes, but those are abundant too).

In 1980, the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager took place:
Ehrlich was the author of a popular book, The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon, a libertarian, was highly skeptical of such claims.
...
Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose 5 metals: copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up.
...
As a result, in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07 to settle the wager in Simon's favor.
...
Many economists understand the principle of substitution and the dynamic influence of technology with respect to commodity prices. For example, in the absence of any new technologies, copper prices would indeed be expected to increase as growing economies demanded more copper to meet the needs of expanding communications networks and plumbing infrastructure. Technological changes mitigated much of this expected demand as fiber optics replaced copper wire networks and various plastics replaced the once ubiquitous copper pipes throughout the construction industry.
...
Julian Simon won because the price of three of the five metals went down in absolute terms and all five of the metals fell in price in inflation-adjusted terms,[2][3] with both tin and tungsten falling by more than half.
...
All of [Ehrlich's] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about "famines of unbelievable proportions" occurring by 1975, about "hundreds of millions of people starving to death" in the 1970s and '80s, about the world "entering a genuine age of scarcity."
In fact, it can be argued -- and has been -- that overpopulation itself is a mirage, that the Earth is in fact underpopulated, and will remain underpopulated for the foreseeable future.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Leyla Shen »

[b]VD[/b] wrote:This concludes our kindergarten-level economics lesson for today.
Indeed. And I’m sure your kindergarten-level thinkers will find it most satisfactory.
L: All goods that have exchange value (commodities) represent WEALTH. Why? Because they have flippen exchange value!

VD: Right. And their flippin exchange value varies depending on context. So if the merchant bought 10 chickens from a village where they sell for $10 each, and sold them in a village where they sell for $11 each, he has just created at least $10 of WEALTH.
Wow. Could you be more disingenuous, or are you really just that ignorant? He hasn’t “CREATED $10 of WEALTH,” he’s made $10 (or gems) IN PROFIT through this particular sale. That is, the chickens are STILL selling at the same price before he was involved as after—$11.00! That is, again, he hasn’t INCREASED the exchange value of the commodity—he’s manipulated existing wealth.

Now he takes that $10 (or gems) and he purchases more $10 chickens (village 1) to sell at $11 in the other village (village 2). Except, just after he’s purchased them, village 2 suffers a bout of bird flu and loses almost all of their chickens. Suddenly, his chickens are worth a lot more and he starts charging $20 per chicken but he still hasn’t CREATED wealth—he’s increased PROFIT by manipulating wealth (wealth here, to be very clear, meaning exactly relative commodity supply-demand value in exchange). Of course, he does this because if he continues to sell the chickens at $11 because there’s now a shortage in village 2, village 1 won’t be able to keep up with the demand from village 2 and will soon run out of chickens without being able to replenish the supply! So, manipulating wealth by increasing the fee to $20 has two positive outcomes for village 1: it keeps the demand from village 2 from skyrocketing out of control and out of the additional profit (negotiated between supplier and merchant) the chicken farmer can negotiate a bigger cut in order to buy more grain and breed more chickens.
See, dummy, when the merchant bought the chickens for $100, the villagers exchanged <$100 worth of chickens for $100. In turn he sold those same chickens for $110 to the villagers who get >$110 of value out of them.
Let’s say that 10 chickens retail at $100 in village 1’s local market. The farmer in village 1 sells the chickens to the merchant for $50 ($5 each). The merchant then has a few options because he deals in the manipulation of wealth. He can:

1. Sell those chickens locally at the usual retail price and make anywhere up to (at least) 100% profit on his investment.
2. Sell those chickens to village 2 (who currently retail chickens at $11) at the retail price and make a 110% profit on his investment.

He would have done both these things without affecting the value of the commodity, and therefore wealth, in any way whatsoever.
Village #1: $90 worth of chickens
Village #2: $110
Merchant: $100
Total wealth: $300

After the transaction, wealth stands as follows:

Village #1: $100
Village #2: $120 worth of chickens
Merchant: $110
Total wealth: $330

The merchant has created $30 of wealth -- a 10% increase -- via arbitrage.
Wow, yeah—magic! Right, Victor? [Rhetorical, of course!]
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by guest_of_logic »

vicdan wrote:There is no such need. There is such want, because people want more than they have.
Why then do politicians (here in Australia anyway) express such concern when economic growth slows? I always assumed that there was some principle of economics that entailed that lack of economic growth led to some dire consequence like a depression. You're saying that there's no such principle? Why do politicians express such concern when economic growth slows?
vicdan wrote:In fact, it can be argued -- and has been -- that overpopulation itself is a mirage, that the Earth is in fact underpopulated, and will remain underpopulated for the foreseeable future.
What do you make of the comment that JRice made at the bottom of your blog post?
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vicdan
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Leyla Shen wrote:Indeed. And I’m sure your kindergarten-level thinkers will find it most satisfactory.
I guess you haven't reached that level yet.
Wow. Could you be more disingenuous, or are you really just that ignorant? He hasn’t “CREATED $10 of WEALTH,” he’s made $10 (or gems) IN PROFIT through this particular sale.
And where did this money come from? What wealth do they represent? The trader sure didn't make the first village worse off (they are actually $10 better off), and he hasn't made the second village worse off (they are also $10 better off). This additional wealth was created via the miracle of logistics -- you know, getting stuff from where it's less valuable to where it's more valuable, thus creating value -- wealth -- via arbitrage.

What you are still missing, dimwitted child, is that things are useless until people make use of them -- and then they are only as useful as the use they are put to, and not one iota more; which therefore means that if the same things are put to differently valued uses in different contexts, such different uses in fact amount to changes in wealth.
That is, the chickens are STILL selling at the same price before he was involved as after—$11.00! That is, again, he hasn’t INCREASED the exchange value of the commodity—he’s manipulated existing wealth.
Wow. You totally don't get it, huh? You poor, poor thing.

You see, girlie, chickens don't 'sell at a price'. They 'sell at a price' in specific contexts -- in our case, in one of two villages. The chickens have no intrinsic price which is the property of the chickens, dummy, they have a dynamic price which is the property of the relationship between the seller of the chicken and the buyer thereof -- and any differences between such selling prices are economic inefficiencies, inefficiencies which are optimized away via arbitrage. Trade thus is systemic self-optimization of the economy -- moving from a less-efficient (more wasteful) state to more efficient state. Trade creates wealth via optimization.

Now of course in our economy, commodities usually sell at pretty much the same price everywhere, because geographic arbitrage has already been exploited to optimize those inefficient differences in price away; which fact you can think the supply/demand-driven free market of course. Thus, as long as idiots like you ignore other forms of arbitrage (e.g. chronological), you can fool yourself into thinking that chickens possess a fixed worth, representing a fixed amount of wealth. But only as long as you close your eyes and ears and pretend that the rest of spacetime doesn't exist.
victor wrote:Village #1: $90 worth of chickens
Village #2: $110
Merchant: $100
Total wealth: $300

After the transaction, wealth stands as follows:

Village #1: $100
Village #2: $120 worth of chickens
Merchant: $110
Total wealth: $330

The merchant has created $30 of wealth -- a 10% increase -- via arbitrage.
Wow, yeah—magic! Right, Victor?
No, moron, relative nature of value. Value depends on context, thus optimizing distribution actually creates value.

The simple fact, which you cannot dispute but are too intellectually corrupt to admit, is that the entire system increased its wealth by 10% via arbitrage -- which is basically the economic equivalent of fine-tuning the system. You know, kinda like tweaking and tuning an engine creates additional performance. All of a sudden the tweaked engine gives you better mileage and/or more horsepower for the same amount of gas.

By your autistic thinking, saying so is equivalent to claiming that the mechanic who tweaked the engine created gas ex nihilo.

Every single act of efficient rational trade (i.e. where each participant is a rational agent pursuing their own self-interest, barring market failures) creates wealth. That's because wealth is not things, it's what people do with things, and so redistributing things more efficiently generates wealth -- it fine-tunes the usage patterns of stuff, getting stuff to those people who derive more use from it, i.e. to those to whom it's worth more.

Every act of efficient rational trade, stupid girl, is a Pareto improvement -- by definition. And Pareto improvements, by definition, make the economic system as a whole better off, i.e. more wealthy. Each Pareto improvement creates wealth.
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vicdan
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

guest_of_logic wrote:Why then do politicians (here in Australia anyway) express such concern when economic growth slows? I always assumed that there was some principle of economics that entailed that lack of economic growth led to some dire consequence like a depression. You're saying that there's no such principle? Why do politicians express such concern when economic growth slows?
Because people like having more better stuff each year -- and because economic slowdown too often indicates upcoming economic shrinkage. There is nothing about free market economy which mandates that it must grow each year, or else, though.
guest_of_logic wrote:
vicdan wrote:In fact, it can be argued -- and has been -- that overpopulation itself is a mirage, that the Earth is in fact underpopulated, and will remain underpopulated for the foreseeable future.
What do you make of the comment that JRice made at the bottom of your blog post?
What I make of it is that societies generally decide what is more important for them -- more goods or, say, healthier biosphere. You can't afford to worry about vanishing spotted tree sloths if your children are starving.

The thing to keep in mind is that nature is not a moral agent. Thus the value of the biosphere must inevitable be considered as its value to us; and in this context, we must then also consider the costs of it, including the opportunity costs.

In economic parlance, environment is a luxury good: the sort of good the consumption of which accelerates as wealth increases. It's a rich man's (or rich society's) toy, so to speak. This in turn suggests that the best way to protect the environment is to get the entire world to the point of wealth where they can afford to start worrying about it, the way the developing countries have been doing for decades.

Jeremy is the sort of guy who considers nature a moral agent, and who in fact would be quite happy if humanity vanished altogether. he and I go way back.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by guest_of_logic »

vicdan wrote:Thus the value of the biosphere must inevitable be considered as its value to us
I assume that that's an anthropocentric statement. Why shouldn't we also consider the value of the biosphere to other animals, or even of just other life?
vicdan wrote:In economic parlance, environment is a luxury good: the sort of good the consumption of which accelerates as wealth increases.
I assume that by "consumption" you mean "exploration-for-enjoyment" (and non-destructive enjoyment in general) rather than "depletion of resources".
vicdan wrote:It's a rich man's (or rich society's) toy, so to speak. This in turn suggests that the best way to protect the environment is to get the entire world to the point of wealth where they can afford to start worrying about it, the way the developing countries have been doing for decades.
Here I assume that "developing" is a typo for "developed", or in other words, that you meant the "First World" rather than the "Third World". If so, then I'd add that it's not just wealth, but technology, that protects the environment, although admittedly the two tend to go hand in hand.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Leyla Shen »

You are such a wanker!
I guess you haven't reached that level yet.
Well, blow me down—that was a surprise! Not.

I might be bedazzled by your grand intellect, too, if I didn’t see right through you.
And where did this money come from? What wealth do they represent? The trader sure didn't make the first village worse off (they are actually $10 better off), and he hasn't made the second village worse off (they are also $10 better off). This additional wealth was created via the miracle of logistics -- you know, getting stuff from where it's less valuable to where it's more valuable, thus creating value -- wealth -- via arbitrage.
What? Getting one thing from where its less valuable to where its more valuable CREATES wealth? Utter fucking rubbish! It fills a demand relative to existing wealth and must end there—that is all. Otherwise, Victor, you will have to admit that the merchant's labour has to be factored into every product that follows from the use of the fucking chicken, which you flatly denied as being too complex a proposition to manage.

Money today represents the resources and production potential of people. None of that, no money. It’s NOTHING but paper, in itself (you know, no intrinsic value).

They are not $10 better off, stupid. They already had the $10 and the chickens in their respective economies in opposite form to trade, otherwise neither would be able to carry through!

The villagers that mine gems approach a local bank for a loan (which essentially pulls money out of its arse). He provides a business plan to demonstrate how he will make sufficient profit to service the loan and the interest. That money, then, is circulated into the economy as an item of confidence—which is why it’s possible for its purchasing power (value) to change. If bank loans are serviced, national currency necessarily retains value because they are producing and trading commodities. To the degree that they are not serviced, national currency loses value. Therefore, instead of gems, the villager in village 2 can give the merchant $10 in profit instead of the gems themselves and instead of having to go to economically less viable lengths to increase the chicken supply (remember, he doesn’t have the land or sufficiently expert people to MORE efficiently increase supply).

It’s called DEBT backed by confidence.

Your entire post, dear, is actually non-sequitur, since I have not been arguing anything even remotely on the order of FIXED PRICE. It’s like engaging a stark raving madman.

For example:
L: That is, the chickens are STILL selling at the same price before he was involved as after—$11.00! That is, again, he hasn’t INCREASED the exchange value of the commodity—he’s manipulated existing wealth.

VD: Wow. You totally don't get it, huh? You poor, poor thing.

You see, girlie, chickens don't 'sell at a price'.
Oh, really?
They 'sell at a price' in specific contexts -- in our case, in one of two villages.
Sure. It’s still a fucking price! And it’s this very same, specific context in which I have been arguing. Nothing I have said comes anywhere near an argument for a “fixed” (absolute) price of chickens. In fact, I have been saying all along that the merchant makes a profit by manipulating wealth, NOT CHICKENS! That was your stupid argument.

You will go to any lengths to protect that unsophisticated little ego of yours, won’t you Victor? Shame, really. If you could only concede the simplest points, then you might be involved in real progress instead of limiting yourself to the highs of prefabricated idiocy.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:Light crude is light crude, whether it was extracted at $5/bbl or $15/bbl. The point is that the price of $5/bbl, despite being the 'labor cost floor' you are talking about, will almost never actually make a showing in the real world.
You mean the price as marginal cost approaching the long run average costs? That's called the long run equilibrium and certainly it shows itself to all the commodity markets.

The real issue is that many economists are saying that such equilibria are still maintained by some ratio of supply and demand versus a stabilized marginal cost price. Marxism however does not define labor by supply and demand at all [it side-steps, abstracts the issue for a reason inherent to Marxist theory] and would maintain that since capitalist notions of profit have disappeared and the commodity only maintains the whole of its own production, the true labor value has been momentary approached, expressed in monetary value.

Marx said that 'normal' and 'average' profit is nothing but selling a commodity at its real value, the crystallization of the total quantity of labor bestowed upon it, which would include way more than the direct production methods and wages.

So if a commodity on long term would have on average large profit margins, this could be said to be caused by some never-ending demand [assuming it's not because a continuous surplus somewhere desiring to offload] in capitalism but Marxism maintains it reveals the real value and if such profit wouldn't flow back directly or indirectly to the workers, the situation could not last. And it shouldn't be hard to see how even a large profit margin on the long run has to return and tends to return to the workers or their whole general constituency. It's like a thermodynamic law of the preservation of labor value!
EU has open migration across borders, but member nation-states generally retain their national character.
Only because there are still many restrictions that make it rather unattractive to move. And with current rates in a few decades 'national character' would indeed be meaningless. Perhaps regional identity would remain. You won't find me disagreeing with that possibility as I'm not a nationalist.
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vicdan
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

guest_of_logic wrote:I assume that that's an anthropocentric statement.
of course. have you met any other entities capable of holding a moral position and assigning moral valuation lately?

Until we meet other lifeforms capable of the same, valuation will necessarily remain an anthropocentric thing.
I assume that by "consumption" you mean "exploration-for-enjoyment" (and non-destructive enjoyment in general) rather than "depletion of resources".
I mean consumption in an economic sense: whatever it is we use in whatever way. Consumption of clean environment means enjoying the fact of lack of smog for example.
Here I assume that "developing" is a typo for "developed", or in other words, that you meant the "First World" rather than the "Third World".
Right, sorry.
If so, then I'd add that it's not just wealth, but technology, that protects the environment, although admittedly the two tend to go hand in hand.
They always go hand in hand. Our wealth is possible because of our technology. No technology means no wealth. In turn wealth enables further technological advancement, because research and deployment of technology requires extensive economic and social infrastructure.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by brokenhead »

Leyla wrote:That is, the chickens are STILL selling at the same price before he was involved as after—$11.00! That is, again, he hasn’t INCREASED the exchange value of the commodity—he’s manipulated existing wealth
You are incapable of seeing a bigger picture. What Victor is telling you is that wealth is not a conserved quantity. Human labor has created wealth. You are saying that the arbitrage of which he is speaking leaves no trace of anything of value. In what sense are tunnels beneath rivers and channels and buildings that reach the sky without lasting value? No one is arguing that there is any such thing as permanence in an absolute sense. But it is just this fact that goods and services have values that are spatially and temporally relative which makes the creation of wealth possible.

The chickens are not wealth. Feeding them, tending them, and slaughtering them creates the wealth. They are no good on the killing floor to anyone, so getting from there to point B also creates wealth. No one is arguing that cash money is wealth. It is merely a bookkeeping device. When new demand arises, new supply increases in turn, and the arbitrage therefore creates wealth. New demand may arise simply from general increased desire for higher standards of living, i.e., more luxury goods. But traditionally, it has been population growth that has generated this ever-increasing demand for goods and services. It is only the relatively recent cumulative effects of industrialization that have led the world in the large to resemble an agar pate on which a culture has begun to senesce. But this is just an analogy, no more or less. Additional human endeavor to improve and/or conserve the quality of human life represents just one more avenue for arbitrage and the creation of wealth. We know that civilizations rise and fall and that species become extinct. We don't know that the human species can become extinct because it never has. In the meantime, the creation of wealth is oblivious to such questions. The more complex society becomes, the more oblivious.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Leyla Shen wrote:They are not $10 better off, stupid. They already had the $10 and the chickens in their respective economies in opposite form to trade, otherwise neither would be able to carry through!
Well, duh! However, the same material goods represented less wealth before the trade, and more wealth after the trade. Trade creates wealth by excising inefficiency from the system, the way tuning an engine creates more performance for the same amount of gasoline.
Sure. It’s still a fucking price!
Yeah -- a different price, representing different value. Going from one arrangement to another arrangement represents a change in value, and thus a change in wealth.

of course the chickens in the first village were potentially sellable at $11/ea. However, potential is not actuality -- and what helps you reach that potential is the supply/demand-driven trade. Information has value.
And it’s this very same, specific context in which I have been arguing. Nothing I have said comes anywhere near an argument for a “fixed” (absolute) price of chickens. In fact, I have been saying all along that the merchant makes a profit by manipulating wealth, NOT CHICKENS!
And that's exactly where you are wrong; but i already explained that to you in ample detail.
You will go to any lengths to protect that unsophisticated little ego of yours, won’t you Victor? Shame, really. If you could only concede the simplest points, then you might be involved in real progress instead of limiting yourself to the highs of prefabricated idiocy.
<LOL> Silly girl, you are stuck in marxist delusion, and too dishonest to recognize that the world has moved on, that your view of economics is as outdated as luminiferous aether.

Inefficiency can destroy wealth without destroying things. In a reverse process, trade creates wealth without creating things, but rather by eliminating inefficiency.
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