>Brad, I am too dense to know when you are serious. I don't even know who Will
>Robinson is.
A pop culture reference to "Lost in Space": think of it as the
modern-day equivalent of a gratuitous: "hic rhodus, hic salta!"
>
>I assume that you know that most people here know that "average market prices
>are *not* labor values" and that that fact does not invalidate what most
>people mean by the LTV.
The argument being made was as follows: "Because changes in the
regime of intellectual property enforcement do not affect what
happens on the factory floor, they cannot affect the rate of
exploitation. Hence changes in IP do not increase surplus value.
Hence changes in IP *redistribute* profits, but do not change the
economy-wide profit rate."
If the LTV is true--if surplus-value is a kind of *stuff* that, once
created, is subject to some kind of conservation law, and bears some
relationship to profits--then this is a cogent, coherent, and correct
argument.
But it ain't: changes in IP can and do change the economy-wide profit
rate (and wage rate as well). My point--that thinking in LTV terms
gets you so tangled up in knots that you cannot think straight--is
not a new one...
