Chilean activist destroys student debt papers worth $500m

[OneFootInTheGrave]

A model for a deregulated economy: Somalia - even children are free to create wealth there.

[Kidlicious]

Um property rights are also required for wealth creation.

[Fake Boris]

Have you read The Wealth of Nations? The whole point of free markets is to seperate economic decision making from politics.

Yes, so that de facto political power is exercised by entities that are not the State.

[Kidlicious]

Yes, so that de facto political power is exercised by entities that are not the State.

That's how property rights work, yes.

[Kidlicious]

Yes, so that de facto political power is exercised by entities that are not the State.

That's how property rights work, yes.

[molly bloom]

You don't even know what I'm talking about do you? Marginalism isn't "right wing" economics, it's what every modern economist believes. It's not "right wing" any more than evolutionary biology is left-wing.

Unfortunately for my patience I know all too well. Thankfully my sense of humour is such that I can still read your posts and end up laughing at them scornfully.

The notion that I'd need Google to know when 'Das Kapital' was published is quite funny- you really should stop judging other people by your own (admittedly) low standards.

Still waiting for that work or person who disproved the theory '150 years ago'. I suppose we'll be waiting a long time.

Oh, and as for Adam Smith originating it, he didn't exactly 'originate' it, but he did expand upon earlier economic theories - by people you won't have read or heard of.

[DinoDoc]

Then why is child labor banned?

Unions didn't want to compete with cheaper labor.

[regexcellent]

Unfortunately for my patience I know all too well. Thankfully my sense of humour is such that I can still read your posts and end up laughing at them scornfully.

So which part do you disagree with? That Marginalism isn't right wing or that Marginalism is accepted by just about every economist?

Still waiting for that work or person who disproved the theory '150 years ago'. I suppose we'll be waiting a long time.

Try reading more carefully. Unless you're being picky about the whether it was precisely 150 years, which would be funny but wouldn't surprise me. There were a number of them. I mentioned Carl Menger, who published 143 years ago. There was also Jevons, who published 152 years ago.

[Kidlicious]

Unfortunately for my patience I know all too well. Thankfully my sense of humour is such that I can still read your posts and end up laughing at them scornfully.

The notion that I'd need Google to know when 'Das Kapital' was published is quite funny- you really should stop judging other people by your own (admittedly) low standards.

Still waiting for that work or person who disproved the theory '150 years ago'. I suppose we'll be waiting a long time.

Oh, and as for Adam Smith originating it, he didn't exactly 'originate' it, but he did expand upon earlier economic theories - by people you won't have read or heard of.

Problem is Adam Smith's theory of value isn't bogus like Marx's theory of value. Smith saw that the value of labor is not the same as the price of the product, which is correct.

[regexcellent]

Kiddy, Adam Smith's theory is just as bogus as Marx's; the difference is that he doesn't have a cult surrounding him that desperately clings to the specific parts of his writings that are demonstrably false.

[Kidlicious]

Kiddy, Adam Smith's theory is just as bogus as Marx's; the difference is that he doesn't have a cult surrounding him that desperately clings to the specific parts of his writings that are demonstrably false.

You don't know what you're talking about. You haven't read Adam Smith and you don't have a firm grasp of the subject matter. But beyond that, your fault is not knowing when to shut up.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Problem is Adam Smith's theory of value isn't bogus like Marx's theory of value. Smith saw that the value of labor is not the same as the price of the product, which is correct.

How is that different from Marx?

[regexcellent]

Unlike Marx, Adam Smith's writings were pretty good for the time and revealed interesting insights. But we have benefited since from hundreds of years of study on top of his discoveries.

[Kidlicious]

How is that different from Marx?

Marx said the value of labor=price. But how can the value of labor be greater than the wage? The value of the product only increases because the capitalist purchases the labor.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Marx said the value of labor=price.

No, he thought the labor cost determined the average exchange value of a commodity in the long run:

The value of commodities as determined by labour time is only their average value. This average appears as an external abstraction if it is calculated out as the average figure of an epoch, e.g. 1 lb. of coffee = 1s. if the average price of coffee is taken over 25 years; but it is very real if it is at the same time recognized as the driving force and the moving principle of the oscillations which commodity prices run through during a given epoch. This reality is not merely of theoretical importance: it forms the basis of mercantile speculation, whose calculus of probabilities depends both on the median price averages which figure as the centre of oscillation, and on the average peaks and average troughs of oscillation above or below this centre. The market value is always different, is always below or above this average value of a commodity. Market value equates itself with real value by means of its constant oscillations, never by means of an equation with real value as if the latter were a third party, but rather by means of constant non-equation of itself (as Hegel would say, not by way of abstract identity, but by constant negation of the negation, i.e. of itself as negation of real value).

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch02.htm#p136

But how can the value of labor be greater than the wage?

The commodity is sold according to its value, and the capitalist makes a profit by paying a wage that is less than the exchange value of the commodity. I thought you used to be a Marxist...?

The value only increases because the capitalist purchases the labor.

???????