Jim: > Economic rents (either due to natural scarcity, monopoly, temporary > technical advantage, or whatever) represent individuals or companies > having a special advantage vis-á-vis other individuals in the > broadly-defined process of capitalist competition. On the other hand, > surplus-value represents the structural advantage in society that one > class (the capitalists, broadly defined) have vis-á-vis another (the > workers) in the economic system as a whole.
It is the above "whatever" part I am confused with. Consider the following: As you know, every now and then Michael Perelman prepares some videos on some topic of his interest and puts them on the internet for free so that we can watch them and learn something. Now suppose that for some funny reason Michael changes his mind and decides to charge us 10 dollars per view of his videos (Ravi helps him free so that he can set up a website with all the bells and whistles,security things, pay pall arrangements and the like). Also suppose that there are 10,000,000 people, including us, who are willing to pay Michael 10 dollars per view and Michael collects 100,000,000 dollars from his viewers. So, the economic rent he collects is 100,000,000 dollars (ignoring the fixed costs he incurred by now). How much of this is surplus value? Also consider the following: Last year, I made 30% on my long term treasuries in my retirement account, because the long term interest rates went down bad. Say, I started with 1 billion dollars and ended up with 1.3 billion dollars. Under this assumption, my economic rent is 300,000,000 dollars. How much of this is surplus value? Lastly, consider the following: On January 1, 2010, I bought a house in Istanbul for 300,000 dollars and on January 1, 2011 sold it for 500,000 dollars. The economic rent I collected is 200,000 dollars. How much of this is surplus value? Best, Sabri _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
