Let me give two other examples of how the problem of the creation of
anti-value is not dealt with by marxist or capitalist economics.
Let's take a look at antibiotics (ATB) and information overload.
Because the concept of anti-value includes more than just the problem of
wastage, or junk creation.
With the invention of penicillin, a new commodity was created, and sales
began to accrue with this new 'value'. But an ecosystem was also
impacted; one that began to modify itself as it began to establish a new
equilibrium between species (bacteria and recipients of ATB) . Who
was thinking of anti-value? It all looked so positive!
But then penicillin began not to work, so new ATB products were created,
creating yet more value! It looked even more positive! Now we
have even more value, and even more weapons in the fight against
disease. Overlooked, was the fact that peniciliin not working, had
created the anti-value of now multi-ATB resistance, and even greater
changes in organism, immune system response.
Now we have many 'valuable' ATB products on the market, many of them
not so effective, since the accumulation of anti-value has also occurred
as even more change to immune response and increased ATB resistance has
occurred.
We have the large accumulation of anti-value of medicine (AIDS and new
explosion of infectious disease of many other new types) now beginning
to tarnish the supposed value created by hundreds of trillions of
dollars of expenditure on ATB product. And yet, no marxist or
capitalist economics even begins to calculate the true balance sheet,
because only value in medicine is seen, not anti-value created by this
area of commodity production.
Now lets examine 'information overload' by first examining what it is.
Advertising is a commodity, therefore it has value! Brains and
psyches have a limited carrying capacity for processing data. Think
of the human brain as yet another of nature's gardens in Eden.
OOps...! What happened with all this production of value?
Capitalism began to create yet another area of where junk product is
disposed. In the mind.
Now the economic specialists will begin to whine and moan, and say....
'this has nothing to do with economics, neither marxist nor captalist.'
The problem is that they are wrong.
This huge new area of anti-value creation by capitalism, has created a
huge population of semi-functional to non-functional humans, that are
unable to even carry out even the production of commodity, so valued by
the economists.
What is the sum total of this anti-value of trash, floating around in
our heads? It is a new phenomena, as it did not exist a hundred
years ago.
Pro- capitalist theoreticians will just say this is pure BS, humans have
always had trash floating around in the head. Not this type of
trash! It appears that they have forgotten about the hundreds of
trillions of dollars spent to put the trash there, that was considered
part of the economy in the first place. Now they want to pretend
that the anti-value doesn't exist! Hypocrites.
Marxists, what's your line on all this? It must be clearly stated
that marxists have lagged totally behind in the understanding of the
commodity of public relations and commercial production. If they
can't even recognize the existance and importance of the commodity, then
they sure as hell are going to have little thought put into the
ecological effect of the anti-value that has been created.
But this is an economic calculation, and even the 'market' people get
into how many hours of work are lost due to depression, etc. But
they only count days called in absent, not days spent in talking to the
wall, or days lost when people blow their brains out. Or days lost
because kids are abused by their parents, etc. And even parents
abused by their kids!
It's amazing how little is actually calculated by economics, the science
of calculating all. It's doubtful that marxists have added little to
understanding economic activity, beyond their understanding of the
struggle between classes.
Unfortunately, this e-list is clear evidence, that marxists have an
over-optimism about the comprehensivenes of their partial, and seldom
updated, economic theories. Many believe that class struggle and
labor theory of value, is all there is to it.
________________________________
Julien wrote-
<Anyway, dealing with the issues you raise is not really in the field of
economics IMO. It's a political (and judicial) issue about what
behaviours to encourage, discourage, or ban. Sure, the technical
arrangements are usually administred by economists but only once they
got orders from the politicians (and judges).>
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