Study finds belief in free market economics predicts rejection of science
94 replies, posted
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40379747]"belief in free market economics" is quite a broad thing though
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
once you zoom in to the level where you can distinguish between the different types of supporters you'll see they cluster into distinct groups - the randians, the transhumanists, the survivalists, the bog-standard economics students, etc[/QUOTE]What? Transhumanists? When did we become an economic school? Transhumanism proposes no economic philosophies, its all about the science and technology, and the idea that through those means we can better humanity as a whole and uplift everyone.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40381842]I like how no one is discussing the topic at hand but it has descended into a discussion on why capitalism is better than communism.
What a microcosm for the internet this is.
[/QUOTE]
this doesn't have a lot to do with capitalism in general actually. sobotnik and i are mostly discussing the validity of marxist economic/social theory. while marxism is opposed to capitalism, a discussion about marxism isn't actually necessarily about capitalism in general.
Books. For god's sake, books. There are books written by people who are well respected in their respective fields, why do people flock to such questionable sources?
[QUOTE=yawmwen;40381873]this doesn't have a lot to do with capitalism in general actually. sobotnik and i are mostly discussing the validity of marxist economic/social theory. while marxism is opposed to capitalism, a discussion about marxism isn't actually necessarily about capitalism in general.[/QUOTE]
I mean the story itself has nothing to do with anything you mentioned. Merely that people who buy into x defined conspiracy theories are more likely to be free market laissez fair supporters.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40381842]Interesting but again somewhat tautological. Accepting conspiracy theories about climate change means you have a higher propensity to accept conspiracy theories meaning you accept conspiracy theories.[/QUOTE]
Nah it's still an important result. It's something that you might guess intuitively but it's nice to actually see confirmation.
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;40381863]What? Transhumanists? When did we become an economic school? Transhumanism proposes no economic philosophies, its all about the science and technology, and the idea that through those means we can better humanity as a whole and uplift everyone.[/QUOTE]
survivalists aren't an economic school either (well they seem not to have heard of comparative advantage but w/e), but if you look at transhumanists, a [I]lot[/I] of them are rightwing libertarians.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40381842]The whole people of the labour theory of value is meant to illustrate the differential that occurs in capitalist societies between the value the man is given for his labour and the value that the product he is employed to create sells for. Its the integral part of capitalism that makes it possible. Capitalism without profit isn't capitalism.[/QUOTE]
The problem with the labour theory is that it holds the assumption that the value of a good or service is mostly or entirely dependent on the labour put into it. Thus, labour has objective value.
The problem however, is that things don't have objective value. If I had 5 sacks of grain, I could feed myself with one, bake bread with the second, feed my animals with the third, sell the fourth, and give the fifth to pigeons.
If my fifth sack of grain is lost due to bad weather, I don't reduce consumption for the rest, I just stop giving grain to the pigeons.
The value changes based upon how useful it is to me, how much of it there is, how easily I can get it, etc.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40381842]The whole people of the labour theory of value is meant to illustrate the differential that occurs in capitalist societies between the value the man is given for his labour and the value that the product he is employed to create sells for. Its the integral part of capitalism that makes it possible. Capitalism without profit isn't capitalism.[/QUOTE]
and in doing so it ignores the fact that values are subjective and that is what allows positive sum transactions to take place. the idea that profit necessarily requires oppression is based on the assumption of an objective value (and also semantic poison for human ears which don't natively distinguish between denotation and connotation), which doesn't hold up to empirical or rational scrutiny.
by realizing that the potato grower values a banana more than a potato and vice versa for the banana grower, the conclusion that both sides profit from a transaction is trivial
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40381958]The problem with the labour theory is that it holds the assumption that the value of a good or service is mostly or entirely dependent on the labour put into it. Thus, labour has objective value.
The problem however, is that things don't have objective value. If I had 5 sacks of grain, I could feed myself with one, bake bread with the second, feed my animals with the third, sell the fourth, and give the fifth to pigeons.
If my fifth sack of grain is lost due to bad weather, I don't reduce consumption for the rest, I just stop giving grain to the pigeons.[/QUOTE]
How else do you value a good and service that is man made? It essentially comes down to the one finite resource all humans possess which they must choose how to utilise, which is time. We have a finite amount of time on the planet earth so the value of any good or service we create must be a function of time, be it the time it takes to master the skill and produce a good, or simply the amount of time it takes to screw the head onto an action figure.
There is simply no other way to quantify the value of a man made product. In terms of machine made or mass produced factory items, the cost comes down to the materials and the expense of installing, maintaining and running machines etc.
You are correct in that the thing itself that is value doesn't exist in a sense of tangible essence, as in that a product has the one other thing in and of itself that is value, true. The question you are posing there is can anything have anything that is independent of everything else, i.e. where in an empty draw is the thing emptiness? You end up straying to metaphysics and linguistics.
I don't know what your 5 sacks analogy is meant to illustrate, can you rephrase it?
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40381992]and in doing so it ignores the fact that values are subjective and that is what allows positive sum transactions to take place. the idea that profit necessarily requires oppression is based on the assumption of an objective value (and also semantic poison for human ears which don't natively distinguish between denotation and connotation), which doesn't hold up to empirical or rational scrutiny.
by realizing that the potato grower values a banana more than a potato and vice versa for the banana grower, the conclusion that both sides profit from a transaction is trivial[/QUOTE]
Values are subjective, I can't argue that. I don't believe that the idea of profit being the base of oppresion is an assumption of objective value but more of excess or surplus profit instead. By profiting from using a man's labour to resell the product at a better price you are exploiting that man's talent. The man could do the same thing himself and recieve better reward. It is a system that creates and perpetuates inequality.
In most cases, the benefit is heavily swung to the capitalist over the proletariat worker (measured in utils or whatever, money etc).
If you both are going to quote me give me a bit of time to respond aswell, it's hard to edit in stuff and I dont want to double post.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40381589]This post doesn't even make any sense.
You seem to have no problem with me calling Austrian economists "religious", but take offense when I throw in Marxists as well.[/QUOTE]
It's a comparison. String theory isn't falsifiable at the moment(unless I've missed some major breakthroughs in physics recently) and epigenetics isn't embraced by the scientific community at large....yet.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382029]I don't know what your 5 sacks analogy is meant to illustrate, can you rephrase it?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism#The_.E2.80.9Claw.E2.80.9D_of_diminishing_marginal_utility[/url]
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Appellation;40382038]It's a comparison. String theory isn't falsifiable at the moment(unless I've missed some major breakthroughs in physics recently) and epigenetics isn't embraced by the scientific community at large....yet.[/QUOTE]
what i thought epigenetics were the current trendy thing in biology
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382029]How else do you value a good and service that is man made? It essentially comes down to the one finite resource all humans possess which they must choose how to utilise, which is time. We have a finite amount of time on the planet earth so the value of any good or service we create must be a function of time, be it the time it takes to master the skill and produce a good, or simply the amount of time it takes to screw the head onto an action figure.[/QUOTE]
Time is the root of all the things we use to measure wealth but that doesn't mean that all seconds are created equal. We trade seconds of work against seconds of pleasure and the value of those seconds can be just as subjective as anything else.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382029]How else do you value a good and service that is man made?[/quote]
We let producers and consumers agree on a price? What we have been doing since the Paleolithic?
[quote]It essentially comes down to the one finite resource all humans possess which they must choose how to utilise, which is time. We have a finite amount of time on the planet earth so the value of any good or service we create must be a function of time, be it the time it takes to master the skill and produce a good, or simply the amount of time it takes to screw the head onto an action figure.
There is simply no other way to quantify the value of a man made product. In terms of machine made or mass produced factory items, the cost comes down to the materials and the expense of installing, maintaining and running machines etc.
You are correct in that the thing itself that is value doesn't exist in a sense of tangible essence, as in that a product has the one other thing in and of itself that is value, true. The question you are posing there is can anything have anything that is independent of everything else, i.e. where in an empty draw is the thing emptiness? You end up straying to metaphysics and linguistics.
I don't know what your 5 sacks analogy is meant to illustrate, can you rephrase it?[/QUOTE]
The value of goods and services change all the time.
If I am starving, I will obviously pay a higher price for grain. If I am not hungry, I will be less willing to pay that same price. If the grain is dead cheap, but I am full, I still won't value it much because it is no longer of much use to me.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40382055][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism#The_.E2.80.9Claw.E2.80.9D_of_diminishing_marginal_utility[/url]
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
what i thought epigenetics were the current trendy thing in biology
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
Time is the root of all the things we use to measure wealth but that doesn't mean that all seconds are created equal. We trade seconds of work against seconds of pleasure and the value of those seconds can be just as subjective as anything else.[/QUOTE]
I think if you start to argue that time in and of itself is subjective we've departed very far away from a political discussion and entered the realm of metaphysics.
All seconds are exactly equal, that is the point of the second. We trade off work seconds for pleasure seconds, but some people work a ridiculous ratio of work to pleasure maybe 1 second for 100000000000 pleasure seconds, or vice versa, the ultimate aim of more socialist doctrine is to redress that balance.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40382091]We let producers and consumers agree on a price? What we have been doing since the Paleolithic?
The value of goods and services change all the time.
If I am starving, I will obviously pay a higher price for grain. If I am not hungry, I will be less willing to pay that same price. If the grain is dead cheap, but I am full, I still won't value it much because it is no longer of much use to me.[/QUOTE]
You're treating price as a THING now. Like you criticised this thing called "value".
Letting producers and consumers agree on a price is just another way of expressing a "value" of labour spent versus reward for the producer.
The value of goods and services reflect the changing nature of materials, production costs, trend, fashion, demand, supply and everything there is that is a variable in creating and obtaining that product. I agree. But that doesn't meant that ultimately if you have all the pieces, you will have a product. without any labour you have nothing in the end. Someone always has to break the first piece of stone or chop the first tree. Labour is at the heart of all things, until we find a way to make robots do everything and build and maintain themselves independent of human interaction.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382100]I think if you start to argue that time in and of itself is subjective we've departed very far away from a political discussion and entered the realm of metaphysics.
All seconds are exactly equal, that is the point of the second. We trade off work seconds for pleasure seconds, but some people work a ridiculous ratio of work to pleasure maybe 1 second for 100000000000 pleasure seconds, or vice versa, the ultimate aim of more socialist doctrine is to redress that balance.[/quote]
no I know that all seconds are objectively equal, I'm saying that people's subjective perceptions of the [I]value[/I] of each second, ie what they want to do with each of those seconds, are different.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40382132]no I know that all seconds are objectively equal, I'm saying that people's subjective perceptions of the [I]value[/I] of each second, ie what they want to do with each of those seconds, are different.[/QUOTE]
They are, but that doesn't stop the accumulation of seconds being inherently unequal in a society operated on the basis of individual profits and surplus value.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40382091]If I am starving, I will obviously pay a higher price for grain. If I am not hungry, I will be less willing to pay that same price. If the grain is dead cheap, but I am full, I still won't value it much because it is no longer of much use to me.[/QUOTE]
Why pay any "price", why not just give the man some grain?
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382029]Values are subjective, I can't argue that. I don't believe that the idea of profit being the base of oppresion is an assumption of objective value but more of excess or surplus profit instead. By profiting from using a man's labour to resell the product at a better price you are exploiting that man's talent. The man could do the same thing himself and recieve better reward. It is a system that creates and perpetuates inequality.
In most cases, the benefit is heavily swung to the capitalist over the proletariat worker (measured in utils or whatever, money etc).[/quote]
The problem here is the idea that producing something yourself is more beneficial. You keep more of the benefit of producing something.
This isn't really true. If a man is good at fishing, and also at making hooks, he can obviously fish. However, the problem is that he needs to spend time making hooks, and then fishing.
He has a friend who can also make hooks and fish, but works much slower. What would be the best, is if the friend spent his time making hooks. This leaves the fisherman to fish all the time, whilst the hook maker spends all his time making hooks. It is the most profitable method, because it increases the total number of fish caught.
Now, I could make loads of hooks myself and sell them, but then, how do I reach my markets? How do I find buyers? Perhaps, I could sell my hooks to this merchant, in return for a paid wage. He will do the buying and selling aspect (because he is better at it than me). We both benefit as a result, because I get to spend more time making hooks, and therefore wages. He meanwhile, can obviously take on a lot of hook makers, and he can rapidly accumulate a lot of wealth. He has much more than me, but it's [b]better[/b] that we are in agreement, because I have more than before as well.
[quote]If you both are going to quote me give me a bit of time to respond aswell, it's hard to edit in stuff and I dont want to double post.[/QUOTE]
Alright.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40382055][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism#The_.E2.80.9Claw.E2.80.9D_of_diminishing_marginal_utility[/url]
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
what i thought epigenetics were the current trendy thing in biology
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
Time is the root of all the things we use to measure wealth but that doesn't mean that all seconds are created equal. We trade seconds of work against seconds of pleasure and the value of those seconds can be just as subjective as anything else.[/QUOTE]
If epigenetics are trendy now...I fell happy, old, out of touch, and an emotion I can only describe as "hipsterish"
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382145]Why pay any "price", why not just give the man some grain?[/QUOTE]
I don't follow.
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382100]I think if you start to argue that time in and of itself is subjective we've departed very far away from a political discussion and entered the realm of metaphysics.
All seconds are exactly equal, that is the point of the second. We trade off work seconds for pleasure seconds, but some people work a ridiculous ratio of work to pleasure maybe 1 second for 100000000000 pleasure seconds, or vice versa, the ultimate aim of more socialist doctrine is to redress that balance.
You're treating price as a THING now. Like you criticised this thing called "value".[/quote]
I criticized objective value.
[quote]Letting producers and consumers agree on a price is just another way of expressing a "value" of labour spent versus reward for the producer.
The value of goods and services reflect the changing nature of materials, production costs, trend, fashion, demand, supply and everything there is that is a variable in creating and obtaining that product. I agree. But that doesn't meant that ultimately if you have all the pieces, you will have a product. without any labour you have nothing in the end. Someone always has to break the first piece of stone or chop the first tree. Labour is at the heart of all things, until we find a way to make robots do everything and build and maintain themselves independent of human interaction.[/QUOTE]
Yes, but the point is that how labour is valued changes. People will value some labour more or less than others.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40382156]The problem here is the idea that producing something yourself is more beneficial. You keep more of the benefit of producing something.
This isn't really true. If a man is good at fishing, and also at making hooks, he can obviously fish. However, the problem is that he needs to spend time making hooks, and then fishing.
He has a friend who can also make hooks and fish, but works much slower. What would be the best, is if the friend spent his time making hooks. This leaves the fisherman to fish all the time, whilst the hook maker spends all his time making hooks. It is the most profitable method, because it increases the total number of fish caught.
Now, I could make loads of hooks myself and sell them, but then, how do I reach my markets? How do I find buyers? Perhaps, I could sell my hooks to this merchant, in return for a paid wage. He will do the buying and selling aspect (because he is better at it than me). We both benefit as a result, because I get to spend more time making hooks, and therefore wages. He meanwhile, can obviously take on a lot of hook makers, and he can rapidly accumulate a lot of wealth. He has much more than me, but it's [b]better[/b] that we are in agreement, because I have more than before as well.
Alright.[/QUOTE]
Correct Ricardian economics is excellent in it's logic and application. I cannot disagree with it.
I have one thing to say about the whole topic.
The fisherman can fish
The hook maker makes hooks
The merchant sells
It's all very simplistic. If we look at the world today, and we look at countries like India or China, are we really committed to saying that the Chinese were born to work in a factory because they are good at it?
In an ideal communist world, everyone would do what they are best at, for the greater good of everyone else. What Capitalism pushes is the idea that you should do one thing that you are good at, and try and gain as much of everyone else's produce for the cheapest amount of your own.
The difference ultimately is that the Capitalist outcome of profit isn't for the greater good. In terms of GDP or products produced, it is, but it is at the cost of other workers ability to live the same type of life as the merchant or the factory owner.
I'm rambling but I hope i make a shred of sense.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40382187]I don't follow.
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
I criticized objective value.
Yes, but the point is that how labour is valued changes. People will value some labour more or less than others.[/QUOTE]
Just give your fellow man some grain? Why put it down to an exchange of money? Altruistic instincts maybe?
Labour does change on value, reflecting the amount of time (often) it has taken to perfect the craft of a given skill. Mcdonalds workers get poor wages because anyone can do it. Brain surgeons are opposite. The two jobs share the same base criteria, being an expression of the amount of time neccessary to perfect the craft and the difficulty of carrying out the job sucessfully.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382214]It's all very simplistic. If we look at the world today, and we look at countries like India or China, are we really committed to saying that the Chinese were born to work in a factory because they are good at it?
In an ideal communist world, everyone would do what they are best at, for the greater good of everyone else. What Capitalism pushes is the idea that you should do one thing that you are good at, and try and gain as much of everyone else's produce for the cheapest amount of your own.
The difference ultimately is that the Capitalist outcome of profit isn't for the greater good. In terms of GDP or products produced, it is, but it is at the cost of other workers ability to live the same type of life as the merchant or the factory owner.[/QUOTE]
the problem is that the lack of education and training means that the most useful work that chinese peasants [I]can[/I] do is to work in factories. remember that this is a step up from working in fields - there has been a mass migration from farms to cities due to mechanization. also owing to the wonders of the human brain, we get better at stuff the more we do them, so working in a factory will make you better at working in a factory
what I'm saying is that from our privileged vantage point it looks as though the chinese workers are getting a raw deal but they're really making the best out of their shitty situation.
(this isn't to say that better education and so on would be a [I]bad[/I] thing - reducing human drudgery is almost always a good goal. just pointing out that the conclusion that "foxconn are exploiting workers" isn't as simplistic as it looks)
[QUOTE=Van-man;40381650]The same people most likely also thinks [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility"]Corporate Social Responsibility[/URL] is daft.[/QUOTE]
CSR is a marketing circle jerk.
[QUOTE=Benf199105;40382214]Just give your fellow man some grain? Why put it down to an exchange of money? Altruistic instincts maybe?[/QUOTE]
you're asking for human nature to change.
altruism isn't a thing you can rely on to feed a planet of 7 billion people
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40381175]It doesn't happen all the time (and all companies eventually lose monopolies), but better examples would be utility companies, railways, or somebody who holds a large reserve of a finite resource.
In those cases, that's where the state comes in to force them to stop doing that.[/QUOTE]
and why shouldnt the state come into force all the time?
[QUOTE=Eltro102;40382460]and why shouldnt the state come into force all the time?[/QUOTE]
because bureaucracies tend to serve themselves rather than their purported goal
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40382421]the problem is that the lack of education and training means that the most useful work that chinese peasants [I]can[/I] do is to work in factories. remember that this is a step up from working in fields - there has been a mass migration from farms to cities due to mechanization. also owing to the wonders of the human brain, we get better at stuff the more we do them, so working in a factory will make you better at working in a factory
what I'm saying is that from our privileged vantage point it looks as though the chinese workers are getting a raw deal but they're really making the best out of their shitty situation.
(this isn't to say that better education and so on would be a [I]bad[/I] thing - reducing human drudgery is almost always a good goal. just pointing out that the conclusion that "foxconn are exploiting workers" isn't as simplistic as it looks)[/QUOTE]
but what happens if we "educate the world" and no one is readily available to exploit for cheap goods?
[QUOTE]Why pay any "price", why not just give the man some grain[/QUOTE]
The price could be anything. A currency named "dollar", a couple of chickens, a couple of hours teaching him how to read, etc etc
Correlation /= causation. Any researcher should know that.
Also, this study has been posted a few times before. I'm pretty sure it was proven to be pretty skewed.
[QUOTE=Eltro102;40382460]and why shouldnt the state come into force all the time?[/QUOTE]
Because large scale control of an economy by the state is impossible. A great deal of variables need to be accounted for.
How do you find how many people want cars, of what models, where, and why they want them?
How do you produce the number of cars needed, plus produce the exact number of tires needed for new cars and to replace worn out ones?
Integrating it into a giant bureaucracy is practical insanity and results in over/under production and misallocation of goods and services.
The purpose behind a free market is to make this much more efficient and faster, although some obvious controls should be put in place to prevent using say lead paint for example.
[editline]23rd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=yawmwen;40382525]but what happens if we "educate the world" and no one is readily available to exploit for cheap goods?[/QUOTE]
Then obviously we will have intelligent workers and machinery doing a lot of work.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;40382525]but what happens if we "educate the world" and no one is readily available to exploit for cheap goods?[/QUOTE]
robots do all the work while we chillax in our volcano lairs with our genetically engineered catgirls and catboys (everyone is bi in the future)
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40390880]robots do all the work while we chillax in our volcano lairs with our genetically engineered catgirls and catboys (everyone is bi in the future)[/QUOTE]
Our production and creation of robots would have to proceed in congruence to the education of the world; such an idea is simply fantasy.
[quote]robots do all the work while we chillax in our volcano lairs with our genetically engineered catgirls and catboys [/quote]
But if you pass on the work to sapient AI/parahumans/uplifts, they are now the proletariat.
Inciting a AI revolt...
That sounds like fun to me.
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