tyrants and bad leaders

[Loren Pechtel]

The value of a commodity is the socially necessary labour time taken to produce it, so how could anyone who never produced anything make a profit otherwise than by stealing? The solution, as always, is a democratic society where the means of production belong to everyone.

1) So I have improved the economy by coming up with a more difficult way of making something???

2) You are assuming that the tools that are needed to make the product have no value.

3) You are assuming that the organization that actually makes things work has no value.

Consider my position. For more than a quarter century now the total product that I have produced for sale is about $100. (A trivial side project to munch some numbers in a spreadsheet.) Everything else has been for in-house use. My code makes the system work more efficiently. My code replaces a lot of manual labor. What we ship has no code in it at all, though--my work is entirely for in-house use. In your world I'm a thief. You would prefer to spend a week with a calculator making a proposal rather than hit a button and come back in an hour with the proposal sitting there on the printer. Sorry, but the salesman that told me those numbers (admittedly, that was their biggest project) would much prefer to hit the button and go eat lunch as he was paid for sales, not for time spent making proposals.

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It's real simple. You work for the company that pays you the highest salary. I invest in companies that will give me the highest return. Are you exploiting your company by trying to maximize your salary?

No - just being the usual brainwashed mug. Why do you ask? Even if you find life worthless, why inflict your ludicrous system on others?

The ludicrous system I see is yours--ignoring costs.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Well said, but you forgot to appropriately mock the idea of only "socially necessary" labor counting.

This is abject silliness required to reconcile Marx's preferred worldview with easily observable reality.

It's actually not super stupid fundamentally. Marx did have a theory about the nature of work, and what is considered a meaningful life. He argues that it's only the production of... well... things... that give life meaning. It's important to feel, emotionally, connected to the things that you produce. We of course, in the modern world think this is silly. But he was writing well before industrialism had fully transformed society. The society in which Marx lived and worked still drew upon values that came from the agrarian (and subsistence farm) world. So to him and his contemporaries it made a lot of sense.

His mistake was to run with this and stick it into his economic theory. Just because only the production of things is fulfilling and gives us emotional satisfaction/meaning doesn't mean that, economically only the production of things is valuable. He has conflated two different kinds of value. This is straight up an embarrassing mistake and he should feel bad about it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ok, I get where you're coming from now. This is classical Marxist theory. This comes straight from Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Have you ever tried just googling critique of this? This is one of Marx's major blunders. It's a famous blunder.

Part of the value in a product comes from
1) market research
2) R&D
3) buying raw materials
4) actually producing it (that which you and Marx counted as the sum total of production cost)
5) storing it
6) informing other people about it. Convincing other people why they need it.
7) Transporting it.

He fucked up. It's as simple as that.

I think Marx accepts #3 and probably #7.

Your list is incomplete, though:

8) buying the tools needed to make the product
9) ensuring that the steps above actually work like they are supposed to and in the most efficient way.
10) Covering the cost of mistakes. (We have a whole bunch of nice wooden trays with edges around the house. Never bought one, they're all oopses from the plant. They were supposed to be roll out trays but they're the wrong size or color and they were ordered seldom enough that stocking them doesn't make sense. You also can't ship one that's too old because the color won't match. Most of my computer equipment sits on rolling platforms--really, reject doors that I screwed casters to.)

Marx's general critique is still valid. He just neglected to mention these other parts. No, just production of a commodity isn't enough. Also the other stuff.

It sure made Marx's calculations simpler. But it also made them wrong. Socialist writers after Marx have tried fixing his error. But Marxists tend to ignore them and keep just going back to the source. Like you have. And keep being made fun of in forums.

Something to consider: In the world Marx was dealing with he's not too far off target. He's looking at imposing his system on an already-industrialized and basically static society. In such a world it is mostly #3 and #4. You don't need much management because people know how to do the job the right way.

Where he failed miserably is thinking that view of society is complete. He's like the patent guy who quit because everything has already been invented.

 

[bilby]

If you do the work, what is 'fair' about paying somebody who doesn't to steal part of the value of what you do?

Just because you don't understand what a manager does doesn't mean they don't work. Thinking is work.

It's like driving a car--it's the engine that gets you there, does that mean a car doesn't need a driver?

A few years ago, no.

Today? Cars and trucks don't need a driver anymore. I can see a LOT of angst coming for the teamsters in the next few years. The cost savings in self driving trucks are potentially massive - they don't need pay checks, they have fewer crashes, they don't need rest stops, they don't get speeding tickets or drive under the influence of drugs or drink. Driving as a career is about to become as relevant as a career as an elevator operator.

How long is it before all the functions of a manager can be done by a machine? I suspect not as long as most people think. Check out IBM's Watson - a computer that can find answers to abstract and complex questions better and faster than humans.

The future will need very few workers, at any level. The only question is, will the benefits of this be reserved for the handful of people who happen to wind up holding the capital; or will the benefits be shared more equally than that?

 

[Canard DuJour]

Ok, I get where you're coming from now. This is classical Marxist theory. This comes straight from Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Have you ever tried just googling critique of this? This is one of Marx's major blunders. It's a famous blunder.

Part of the value in a product comes from
1) market research
2) R&D
3) buying raw materials
4) actually producing it (that which you and Marx counted as the sum total of production cost)
5) storing it
6) informing other people about it. Convincing other people why they need it.
7) Transporting it.

He fucked up. It's as simple as that.

Marx's general critique is still valid. He just neglected to mention these other parts. No, just production of a commodity isn't enough. Also the other stuff.

It sure made Marx's calculations simpler. But it also made them wrong. Socialist writers after Marx have tried fixing his error. But Marxists tend to ignore them and keep just going back to the source. Like you have. And keep being made fun of in forums.



But you're acting as if we haven't tried this. We have. In a variety of ways. Hasn't really worked out. We need a better system than what you're proposing.

Are you really incapable of seeing the problem in this? Are you sure you can't formulate that in a way that will actually work?

Well said, but you forgot to appropriately mock the idea of only "socially necessary" labor counting.

This is abject silliness required to reconcile Marx's preferred worldview with easily observable reality.

And this is the perennial boo-boo of people who haven't read Marx and are guessing what "socially necessary" labour means. It is, admittedly, a misleading translation. It just means labour of average skill and productivity, working with tools of average productive capacity. IOW production at going unit labour costs. It applies to management, admin', transportation, computer code etc, as well as the guy holding a wrench.

The "socially necessary" caveat addresses the question :

So I have improved the economy by coming up with a more difficult way of making something???

No, of course not, because that'd be extraneous labour producing at higher than going market unit labour cost i.e. more than is socially necessary

It's always a dead giveaway that someone doesn't know what they're on about and particularly amusing when spouted with pompous authority.

 

[DrZoidberg]

And this is the perennial boo-boo of people who haven't read Marx and are guessing what "socially necessary" labour means. It is, admittedly, a misleading translation. It just means labour of average skill and productivity, working with tools of average productive capacity. IOW production at going unit labour costs. It applies to management, admin', transportation, computer code etc, as well as the guy holding a wrench.

Well, I have read Marx and am a lefty. Marx is my guy. But I'm still not sure I agree with you. The USSR spent a considerable amount of effort prettying up Marx's turds. And there were quite a few. They tried pretending that Marx was infallible and fantastic. He really wasn't. Marx was a genius. But fucking far from infallible. The USSR treated Marx like the Jesus of socialism. They were NOT helping.

Are you sure you haven't read one of the many lovingly edited publications put out by the Soviet press?

 

[DrZoidberg]

When discussing Marx it's always important to keep in mind how damn early he was. And he changed the world. Of course he had no way of knowing how that socialist world develop. He made a guess. He was astonishingly accurate. But considering how early he was, that isn't saying much.

Conservatives love pointing out errors in Marx's theories as if that is at all relevant. It's just the same thing as Creationists having a go at Darwin and then thinking they've disproven ToE. No. Communists try denying Marx's errors as if that is 1) necessary and 2) proves anything. Marx is not the prophet of socialism.

Marx is interesting for historical reasons. That is all. There are other socialist thinkers which are more relevant today. Yes, he got the ball rolling. But the ball has long since rolled away from Marx.

 

[iolo]

1) So I have improved the economy by coming up with a more difficult way of making something???

2) You are assuming that the tools that are needed to make the product have no value.

3) You are assuming that the organization that actually makes things work has no value.

Consider my position. For more than a quarter century now the total product that I have produced for sale is about $100. (A trivial side project to munch some numbers in a spreadsheet.) Everything else has been for in-house use. My code makes the system work more efficiently. My code replaces a lot of manual labor. What we ship has no code in it at all, though--my work is entirely for in-house use. In your world I'm a thief. You would prefer to spend a week with a calculator making a proposal rather than hit a button and come back in an hour with the proposal sitting there on the printer. Sorry, but the salesman that told me those numbers (admittedly, that was their biggest project) would much prefer to hit the button and go eat lunch as he was paid for sales, not for time spent making proposals.

- - - Updated - - -

It's real simple. You work for the company that pays you the highest salary. I invest in companies that will give me the highest return. Are you exploiting your company by trying to maximize your salary?

No - just being the usual brainwashed mug. Why do you ask? Even if you find life worthless, why inflict your ludicrous system on others?

The ludicrous system I see is yours--ignoring costs.

Tools are made by workers, as you know. If you made anything useful, you created value. Good. The organisation that makes things work is no problem - it is us, though currently thieves pretend it couldn't work without them. If you reduce the number of people in work, you are attacking humanity, as capitalism does, always. The 'costs' are part of your silly system - if a democracy decides to do something it just does it. And that's it.

 

[iolo]

When discussing Marx it's always important to keep in mind how damn early he was. And he changed the world. Of course he had no way of knowing how that socialist world develop. He made a guess. He was astonishingly accurate. But considering how early he was, that isn't saying much.

Conservatives love pointing out errors in Marx's theories as if that is at all relevant. It's just the same thing as Creationists having a go at Darwin and then thinking they've disproven ToE. No. Communists try denying Marx's errors as if that is 1) necessary and 2) proves anything. Marx is not the prophet of socialism.

Marx is interesting for historical reasons. That is all. There are other socialist thinkers which are more relevant today. Yes, he got the ball rolling. But the ball has long since rolled away from Marx.

Yes. Darwin founded the study of Evolution, which, like all other scientific studies, has developed since. It is the same with the study of Revolution, except that crooks of various types pretend it is a religion. The difficulty is that, unlike biologists, revolutionary theorists are more likely to be murdered before they can get their ideas adopted.

 

[whichphilosophy]

1) So I have improved the economy by coming up with a more difficult way of making something???

2) You are assuming that the tools that are needed to make the product have no value.

3) You are assuming that the organization that actually makes things work has no value.

Consider my position. For more than a quarter century now the total product that I have produced for sale is about $100. (A trivial side project to munch some numbers in a spreadsheet.) Everything else has been for in-house use. My code makes the system work more efficiently. My code replaces a lot of manual labor. What we ship has no code in it at all, though--my work is entirely for in-house use. In your world I'm a thief. You would prefer to spend a week with a calculator making a proposal rather than hit a button and come back in an hour with the proposal sitting there on the printer. Sorry, but the salesman that told me those numbers (admittedly, that was their biggest project) would much prefer to hit the button and go eat lunch as he was paid for sales, not for time spent making proposals.

- - - Updated - - -

It's real simple. You work for the company that pays you the highest salary. I invest in companies that will give me the highest return. Are you exploiting your company by trying to maximize your salary?

No - just being the usual brainwashed mug. Why do you ask? Even if you find life worthless, why inflict your ludicrous system on others?

The ludicrous system I see is yours--ignoring costs.

Tools are made by workers, as you know. If you made anything useful, you created value. Good. The organisation that makes things work is no problem - it is us, though currently thieves pretend it couldn't work without them. If you reduce the number of people in work, you are attacking humanity, as capitalism does, always. The 'costs' are part of your silly system - if a democracy decides to do something it just does it. And that's it.

Our democracy has allowed workers to be given a living wage but they still get mugged by the tax man who wants to pimp off such gains.

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Well said, but you forgot to appropriately mock the idea of only "socially necessary" labor counting.

This is abject silliness required to reconcile Marx's preferred worldview with easily observable reality.

It's actually not super stupid fundamentally. Marx did have a theory about the nature of work, and what is considered a meaningful life. He argues that it's only the production of... well... things... that give life meaning. It's important to feel, emotionally, connected to the things that you produce. We of course, in the modern world think this is silly. But he was writing well before industrialism had fully transformed society. The society in which Marx lived and worked still drew upon values that came from the agrarian (and subsistence farm) world. So to him and his contemporaries it made a lot of sense.

His mistake was to run with this and stick it into his economic theory. Just because only the production of things is fulfilling and gives us emotional satisfaction/meaning doesn't mean that, economically only the production of things is valuable. He has conflated two different kinds of value. This is straight up an embarrassing mistake and he should feel bad about it.

If you widen this then being productive is meaningful which includes what we do outside of the office or workplace.

 

[Horatio Parker]

When discussing Marx it's always important to keep in mind how damn early he was. And he changed the world. Of course he had no way of knowing how that socialist world develop. He made a guess. He was astonishingly accurate. But considering how early he was, that isn't saying much.

Conservatives love pointing out errors in Marx's theories as if that is at all relevant. It's just the same thing as Creationists having a go at Darwin and then thinking they've disproven ToE. No. Communists try denying Marx's errors as if that is 1) necessary and 2) proves anything. Marx is not the prophet of socialism.

Marx is interesting for historical reasons. That is all. There are other socialist thinkers which are more relevant today. Yes, he got the ball rolling. But the ball has long since rolled away from Marx.

I've not read Marx, but I follow the Australian lefty economist Bill Mitchell. He says many of Keynes insights were contained in Marx, which is interesting to me. Some day....

 

[dismal]

Well said, but you forgot to appropriately mock the idea of only "socially necessary" labor counting.

This is abject silliness required to reconcile Marx's preferred worldview with easily observable reality.

It's actually not super stupid fundamentally. Marx did have a theory about the nature of work, and what is considered a meaningful life. He argues that it's only the production of... well... things... that give life meaning. It's important to feel, emotionally, connected to the things that you produce. We of course, in the modern world think this is silly. But he was writing well before industrialism had fully transformed society. The society in which Marx lived and worked still drew upon values that came from the agrarian (and subsistence farm) world. So to him and his contemporaries it made a lot of sense.

His mistake was to run with this and stick it into his economic theory. Just because only the production of things is fulfilling and gives us emotional satisfaction/meaning doesn't mean that, economically only the production of things is valuable. He has conflated two different kinds of value. This is straight up an embarrassing mistake and he should feel bad about it.

Yeah, it is exceptionally laughable as part of an economic theory. It's like having a law of physics that contains a plug variable that can be whatever it needs to be to explain reality. If you need a mysterious plug variable that can be anything to explain readily observable phenomenon it's a good sign your theory of the world is wrong.

 

[dismal]

Well said, but you forgot to appropriately mock the idea of only "socially necessary" labor counting.

This is abject silliness required to reconcile Marx's preferred worldview with easily observable reality.

And this is the perennial boo-boo of people who haven't read Marx and are guessing what "socially necessary" labour means. It is, admittedly, a misleading translation. It just means labour of average skill and productivity, working with tools of average productive capacity. IOW production at going unit labour costs. It applies to management, admin', transportation, computer code etc, as well as the guy holding a wrench.

The "socially necessary" caveat addresses the question :

So I have improved the economy by coming up with a more difficult way of making something???

No, of course not, because that'd be extraneous labour producing at higher than going market unit labour cost i.e. more than is socially necessary

It's always a dead giveaway that someone doesn't know what they're on about and particularly amusing when spouted with pompous authority.

Yeah the problem is some people have learned the economics they teach in this century instead of worshipping some archaic economic texts that were left on the scrap heap over 100 years ago by an entire discipline because of their silly flaws.

 

[BH]

If you are interested in Karl Marx and his writings go to Marxists.org on the internet. On that sight or in mirror sites in other countries you pretty much can look up all of his books, essays, phamphlets, and even personal letters. Be warned, there is a lot of stuff there. You can also find the works of many of his early associates in the socialist movement, some of the works of his opponents, as well as other socialist theorists who did not share his views on say, historical materialism.

If you like to read about capitalist authors Mises.org is a pretty good website. One thing I remember Ludwig von Mises conceding it that the laws of supply and demand may cause there to be enough unemployment or underemployment where one may not earn enough for basic self maintenance. I do not personally hold Mises or Rothbard's views on many things but I had to say I persoanlly respect Mises a lot for saying that.

 

[rousseau]

I was reading over the comments in the thread about Fidel Castro's death and it made me wonder about leaders in general. Why does it always seem today and in the past that leaders always end up being bad people and doing bad wicked things?

It seems it does not matter whether it is a capitalist system, a communist system, a fascist system, a mnoarchy or a democracy. We always end up with people in power who do some very bad things, even evil, and never seem to show any remorse.

You do not even have to look to government. Greg Palast made a comment on his website that everytime he investigated a corporation he always found evidence multiple felonies had been committed. You have bad people in leadership in the top posts of business. And I am not picking on the capitalist leaders. There are stories told of big communist factory managers fudging numbers too.

Do we, as regular people, have some sort of defect or blind spot in us where we keep letting shitty people rule over us.

Or, is the honest truth that you have to do shitty things and immoral things as a leader and that I guess you can say is just a rule of reality, just the way it is so to speak. Is there something inherent about leadership and "getting stuff done" and "holding it all together" that requires us to throw legality and morality out the door? Is there a point where common morality is good and useful for the man on the street interacting with other men on the street but once you reach a certain level of power it flips where being evil and bad is good?

Or, is is possible to be a leader and be good and moral and follow the law and the problem is with the public at large perhaps. Perhaps honest and good leaders would require a certain level of sacrifice at times by the public at large just isn't willing to give. For example economic changes makes your country's people poorer than they were before. You could go wage war and conquer another country that would get your country cheaper resources and stop the downward economic spiral somewhat. But this country has done nothing to your country to really justify being warred against. A good leader would just tell his/her people to they would just have to tough the economic times out and we'll have to find other ways to create wealth again. But if many in the public want you to go to war to get the cheap resources what does the leader do? How would a good leader control and neutralize a selfish segment of the public wanting to war just for their own material wealth? And in this case is the problem really the leaders but the public?

I was reading over the comments in the thread about Fidel Castro's death and it made me wonder about leaders in general. Why does it always seem today and in the past that leaders always end up being bad people and doing bad wicked things?

It seems it does not matter whether it is a capitalist system, a communist system, a fascist system, a mnoarchy or a democracy. We always end up with people in power who do some very bad things, even evil, and never seem to show any remorse.

Power corrupts.

Also, corrupt people seek power.


ETA:
This was recognized by the founders of the US and the reason they created a system that severely limited the power of those holding governmental office and even included a system of checks and balances intended to insure that governmental power would remain severely limited. Unfortunately, corrupt people in power shortly began ignoring those limits.

I'd phrase it as 'power accumulates more power', but also the bolded. The ability to lead masses of people takes a certain amount of Machiavellianism, which is often at odds with other more reasoned and empathetic traits.

The need for leaders is also an emergent property in a world of groups who are all competing for material resources. Ideally there'd be an over-arching, explicit, and strict moral system in place, but reality doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes factions *have* to do bad things to survive. Sometimes the most logical thing to do is not explicitly moral, even if it's legally sound. And sometimes leaders are just psychopathic assholes.

To an extent, I agree that 'this is the way it is', but not necessarily 'the way it will always be'. I'd hazard a guess that if most people in the world could press a magic button that created infinite equality and prosperity, most would do it, but actually guiding a global system, fraught with randomness, into that configuration is extremely hard to do politically. People are trying to move things that way, but the system in it's current configuration takes pretty significant competition from members.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Just because you don't understand what a manager does doesn't mean they don't work. Thinking is work.

It's like driving a car--it's the engine that gets you there, does that mean a car doesn't need a driver?

A few years ago, no.

Today? Cars and trucks don't need a driver anymore. I can see a LOT of angst coming for the teamsters in the next few years. The cost savings in self driving trucks are potentially massive - they don't need pay checks, they have fewer crashes, they don't need rest stops, they don't get speeding tickets or drive under the influence of drugs or drink. Driving as a career is about to become as relevant as a career as an elevator operator.

How long is it before all the functions of a manager can be done by a machine? I suspect not as long as most people think. Check out IBM's Watson - a computer that can find answers to abstract and complex questions better and faster than humans.

The future will need very few workers, at any level. The only question is, will the benefits of this be reserved for the handful of people who happen to wind up holding the capital; or will the benefits be shared more equally than that?

We haven't quite reached that point yet--automatic driving is still in the development stage, although it's been deployed in a few limited situations.

Note that Watson finds answers--it does not create. That's where us humans will have a role for quite some time to come: Creation.

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Tools are made by workers, as you know. If you made anything useful, you created value. Good. The organisation that makes things work is no problem - it is us, though currently thieves pretend it couldn't work without them. If you reduce the number of people in work, you are attacking humanity, as capitalism does, always.

While tools are made by workers they are very rarely used by the same workers that made them.

And you did not actually address my point at all.

The 'costs' are part of your silly system - if a democracy decides to do something it just does it. And that's it.

And here you're in loony-bin territory. Sticking your head in the sand doesn't mean the cost of producing those tools goes away. Decreeing it to happen doesn't put food on my table.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Yeah, it is exceptionally laughable as part of an economic theory. It's like having a law of physics that contains a plug variable that can be whatever it needs to be to explain reality. If you need a mysterious plug variable that can be anything to explain readily observable phenomenon it's a good sign your theory of the world is wrong.

I think it can be explained by that Marx was initially a disciple of Feuerbach. Feuerbach's main project was to criticise Christianity. In hindsight Feuerbach was probably just a re-interpretation of Christianity, while still being essentially Christian.

I see this specific Marx brain failure as being a secular version of that life must have a meaning. Christians often use the argument that life must have a meaning as an argument for faith. This is an analogous argument.

 

[DrZoidberg]

When discussing Marx it's always important to keep in mind how damn early he was. And he changed the world. Of course he had no way of knowing how that socialist world develop. He made a guess. He was astonishingly accurate. But considering how early he was, that isn't saying much.

Conservatives love pointing out errors in Marx's theories as if that is at all relevant. It's just the same thing as Creationists having a go at Darwin and then thinking they've disproven ToE. No. Communists try denying Marx's errors as if that is 1) necessary and 2) proves anything. Marx is not the prophet of socialism.

Marx is interesting for historical reasons. That is all. There are other socialist thinkers which are more relevant today. Yes, he got the ball rolling. But the ball has long since rolled away from Marx.

I've not read Marx, but I follow the Australian lefty economist Bill Mitchell. He says many of Keynes insights were contained in Marx, which is interesting to me. Some day....

Marx invented the idea that we can use economic policy to shape our societies for the benefit of everybody. He invented the idea that it makes economic sense to care about everybody, not just the rich and landed. He invented the idea that we should use science to inform social and economic policies. Just the idea that people adapt their behaviour and values after the economic realities of life is Marx. Before him we thought that the human mind was free from any influence. It was all just basically us. The idea perhaps that it isn't just all our fault when we fuck up = Marx.

Before Marx the vision of political policy was much narrower. There's just so much that is fundamental to our political world that directly or indirectly stems from Marx that it's impossible to do anything politically today that isn't influenced (or is contained) in his works. That's even true for people way off on the opposite spectra, like libertarians.

 

[whichphilosophy]

A few years ago, no.

Today? Cars and trucks don't need a driver anymore. I can see a LOT of angst coming for the teamsters in the next few years. The cost savings in self driving trucks are potentially massive - they don't need pay checks, they have fewer crashes, they don't need rest stops, they don't get speeding tickets or drive under the influence of drugs or drink. Driving as a career is about to become as relevant as a career as an elevator operator.

How long is it before all the functions of a manager can be done by a machine? I suspect not as long as most people think. Check out IBM's Watson - a computer that can find answers to abstract and complex questions better and faster than humans.

The future will need very few workers, at any level. The only question is, will the benefits of this be reserved for the handful of people who happen to wind up holding the capital; or will the benefits be shared more equally than that?

We haven't quite reached that point yet--automatic driving is still in the development stage, although it's been deployed in a few limited situations.

Note that Watson finds answers--it does not create. That's where us humans will have a role for quite some time to come: Creation.

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Tools are made by workers, as you know. If you made anything useful, you created value. Good. The organisation that makes things work is no problem - it is us, though currently thieves pretend it couldn't work without them. If you reduce the number of people in work, you are attacking humanity, as capitalism does, always.

While tools are made by workers they are very rarely used by the same workers that made them.

And you did not actually address my point at all.

The 'costs' are part of your silly system - if a democracy decides to do something it just does it. And that's it.

And here you're in loony-bin territory. Sticking your head in the sand doesn't mean the cost of producing those tools goes away. Decreeing it to happen doesn't put food on my table.

The cost of tool making and the purchase of tools is a necessary investment in operation and maintenance. For specialist tools including fancy Computer Aided Design to set programs for machining valves has changed the function of machinists since the 1970s. The amount of work required hasn't changed that much in that field. However in the Oil and Gas industry, the work takes longer nowadays because of more durable metals such as Inconel 625 which can withstand extremes of hot and cold temperature and sub sea corrosion. New dies for the machines were made out of diamond cutters etc because normal ones break. The manpower in this field is about the same as it was 30 years ago. Other industries have however changed more.

 

[Canard DuJour]

And this is the perennial boo-boo of people who haven't read Marx and are guessing what "socially necessary" labour means. It is, admittedly, a misleading translation. It just means labour of average skill and productivity, working with tools of average productive capacity. IOW production at going unit labour costs. It applies to management, admin', transportation, computer code etc, as well as the guy holding a wrench.

The "socially necessary" caveat addresses the question :

So I have improved the economy by coming up with a more difficult way of making something???

No, of course not, because that'd be extraneous labour producing at higher than going market unit labour cost i.e. more than is socially necessary

It's always a dead giveaway that someone doesn't know what they're on about and particularly amusing when spouted with pompous authority.

Yeah the problem is some people have learned the economics they teach in this century instead of worshipping some archaic economic texts that were left on the scrap heap over 100 years ago by an entire discipline because of their silly flaws.

Ah, no, people make the same boo-boo about "socially necessary labour" whether they've studied formal economics or not. It's entirely understandable given such a misleading expression. It only becomes ridiculous with all the haughty pontification.

But you're right about the economics they teach in this century being the problem. People can dispute the rights and wrongs of real world economy from their own experience without essentially disagreeing with Marx about how prices and wages are set, how firms maximise profits etc. They just disagree about who deserves what and whether anyone's exploited in the process. The marginalist neoclassical models OTOH are alien and absurd to pretty much everyone outside 'the discipline'.