Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. In the time-honored tradition of our group, grab yourself a bevrage of your choosing and relax for this weeks, weekly discussion thread. Oh and have a pleasant Vietnamese Family Day

P.S. if anyone can explain how this photo came up with the search term “Vietnamese Family Day” I would love to know

  • rando895@lemmygrad.ml
    11·
    8 days ago

    As a thought:

    We use money as a convenient way to describe the value of someone’s labour. But, it removes all context. It’s kind of like having a multi variable equation to describe the economic value someone has, and either using approximations, derivatives, or substitutions, to simplify the equation into a single variable.

    Then, we use markets to do the same thing with the needs of people. It’s a simplified representation of what the real quantifiable needs of people and society are.

    It’s sort of like instead of asking everyone what they need and want, prioritizing the needs, and figuring out how much labour time is required to meet those needs, then figuring out how much labour time is required to meet the wants. We decided it is easier(true)/better to assume that each person will only choose to trade the amount of labour time they are willing to commit to trading for their needs/wants.

    If someone in this situation is able to have more money than their labour value (theft, inheritance, etc.), they are disconnected from the effort required to meet their needs/wants. Thus, they have the money required to meet their needs, plus extra that is unearned, and an imbalance of power under this arrangement. It becomes possible to offer more for resources that are either scarce, or close enough to being scarce, thus driving up the price without any additional labour from that individual.

    I bet it is possible to invent a new metric (besides money, but maybe unnecessary) and/or a new distribution tool (instead of the “market”) that prioritizes needs and wants more than simply money/capital.

    I’ll call this work:

    Crapital volume 1

    • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
      9·
      8 days ago

      Keep in mind this is a much smaller scale than any bigger society but there are some Belgian communes for example that use time as a metric. For example: I work x amount of time doing stuff for you, like working in your garden, and you then owe me x amount of time to do something for me. Basically everyone trades their time to meet the needs of the commune.

      • Comrade Rain@lemmygrad.ml
        6·
        8 days ago

        That sounds nice and all, but the relationship between time and labour is not linear. So one might put in more effort than another in the same amount of time. Therefore, there are some limitations in using time as such a metric.

    • MovingThrowaway [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      5·
      8 days ago

      Yeah, symbols are imperfect representations of their essences, and each layer of abstraction is ripe for ideological obfuscation. The entirety of our culture seems trapped in a semi-orchestrated signifier dance that suppresses not only class consciousness, but consciousness in general.