Norman: [scroll down for my answer to Tahir's and Tom's posts]
>to anyone on the street, a wage is money or goods received per
>unit of time by an employee from an employer for doing something of
>"value" to the employer.
I thought that was "hourly wage". I'm strongly for not missing the key role of the
total average wage (per day, month, or whatever) that someone gets as
opposed to the price of his time spent in the most formal part of the process of
production. Anyway, some people are not even paid per unit of time.
>cutting down a
>tree is wasteful to the environmentalist, but useful to the lumberjack.
Cutting down a tree is wasteful for everyone. The lumberjack may not even
benefit from it long term. He can lose his job if he does it too much. He benefits
only if he does it wisely (or if his boss gives him wise orders, rather).
>keep definitions
>simple.
I'm with you there... but also keep them in tune with the definitions of the people
you're talking to or else...
And, frankly, "wage" is too central and full of contradictory meanings to simply
tell people to go back to their dictionaries.
>the phrase "determined by" or "caused by" are the same.
Not in my dictionary. But maybe that's like that in some local English.
>... people in a culture have "values" and maybe we
>can average out these values into a set of "cultural values", but it
>wouldn't be easy.
But modern economics are based on that, AFAIK. And economists are bad at
it. If you don't guess what I mean, I'll give you one mysterious clue: "deflator". If
you still don't get it, you are allowed to beg for my help.
>FYI, a "wage" AND energy (and time, mass, etc.) are scalar
>values (measured by quantity), not vector values (measured by quantity +
>direction). therefore, saying that "energy flows in a direction" is
>creating a definition inconsistent with the customary definitions of
>Physics.
Dear professor, have you forgotten what the V in MV=PT stands for? Or
maybe modern economists have got rid of that inconvenient V altogether. If
you can understand MV=PT, then you can understand Hallyx.
Are you faking not to have understood that it was a metaphore? He probably
meant energy "flowing in the direction of" entropy.
BTW, money is scalar only because of a simplification IMO and it might be the
same story with energy AFAIK.
>yes, i agree. a wage definitely has purchasing power. every economist
>will agree to that. doesn't have to be a money-wage, however.
Yes. I should not have left that implied.
>however, any income has
>purchasing power - not just wage income, so there's nothing unique about
>wages having purchasing power. money, however defined or created, has
>purchasing power.
Yes. The point was not to elevate the wage to a mystical status.
>wage the result of waste? whose waste? what is waste to one person is
>wealth to someone else.
Yes. To someone else. I was obviously talking from the point of view of the
whole of a society here.
>again, waste is in the eye of the beholder.
Not only in the eye, sadly. I'm absolutely certain that you understand why.
>if we are to develop a common defintion of wage, then i suggest we not
>use the methods of speculative philosophy;
Care to explain us that's this "speculative philosophy" you're talking about?
IMO you'd better get used to it or speak only to the people like you. But maybe
I've not understood what you meant by "speculative philosophy".
Tahir:
>In a material human community we would
>surely, as a first step, develop a way of calculating the
>proportion of use values that an individual could
>appropriate relative to his or her contribution to
>production (yes this would be quite tricky). It would not
>constitute money, because (based on our experiences of
>history) we would simply not allow this abstraction from use
>value into pure exchange value.
>...
>But
>please, wages are part of capitalism, not socialism.
Wages are not part of socialism because you would not let money exist in
socialism? And you say that if there is money there's no socialism? This
makes sense, but I'm not sure to follow you.
BTW, what's the point of computing use-values if you don't want to transform
them in exchange value? My spontaneous speculation is that you could get rid
of computing use-values completely if you want no market. Am I right?
>Socialism is either a vision of something we believe is
>still possible, and if not what have you got? Please be
>explicit.
Hmmm... Please be more explicit . I don't even know what you mean by
socialism precisely. And could you explain a bit the purpose of the "what have
you got" question?
Tom quoting "Environment AmeriScan":
>In a report
>in today's issue of the journal "Science," 17 scientists say putting a price
>tag on ecosystems may be necessary to create economic incentives for
>preserving them.
I would have to read the whole proposal to see if it would probably be
constructive or not but it definitely could. I don't like putting price tags on things
like that but it's better than what we have currently. But it's certainly not
necessary for theoretical reasons. It might be in the real political world
however.
>We're faced with hideous tradeoffs no matter
>how you look at it.
Right on the spot.
>What we're offering is a framework for thinking about
>these tradeoffs.
My problem is precisely that while it might be a good idea practicaly, it's not a
good framework for thinking. But I have ranted enough about that in that post
where I talked use-values & ecological-values. I would have to see the
details before deciding to despise them, though.
Julien
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