Originally posted by Sirotnikov
How is value dependant on the amount of workers is beyond me.
Value is a subjective thing, that is dependent on the possible consumers. This has almost no relation to the workers. Wealth is a matter of monetizing the value at a certain point and time.
How is value dependant on the amount of workers is beyond me.
Value is a subjective thing, that is dependent on the possible consumers. This has almost no relation to the workers. Wealth is a matter of monetizing the value at a certain point and time.
If you make umbrellas and there is no rain, your umbrellas are worth nothing. If it starts raining they 'magically' acquire value.
However, if you are deciding to make a product, you must consider your costs which will include labour time. If you are making product A, which takes 100 hours, and product B which takes 10 hours, product A has more something in it than product B. In Marxist economics, this something represents value, and while it might not tell us anything about how much someone wants to pay for it, it does tell us something about its intrinsic worth from a production point of view.
To take an artistic example, if a painter throws a can of paint at a canvas most people will know in their hearts that not much work has gone into it, however much the fashionistas say it is worth. Most people will recognise the intrinsic value of a skillfully-created painting that has taken hundreds of hours.
Neither measurement of value tells the whole story, as they come at it from different directions.
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