Debunking Mouthy Infidel: Labour Theory of Value: Adam Smith vs Karl Marx Part 1

5 years ago
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In this first part response debunking Mouth Infidel on the Labour Theory of Value I cover the difference between Adam Smith vs Karl Marx explaining why the Marxist is deeply and inherently flawed.

Mouthy Infidel doesn't even understand the Labour Theory of Value of Marx himself as he attempts to conflate the laws of supply and demand with Marxism saying that Marx accepted the laws of supply and demand. Furthermore, he attempts to state that price fixing has nothing to do with Marxism, whilst he may be accurate that by theory it aims for the moneyless based economy, this is still faced with the economic calculation problem.

Important to note, my definition of Marxism is of the real world of socialism, not theoretical fairy tale bed time stories of Marxist theory. Even if you go along with that argument, however, you can find my argument on the economic calculation problem in 2 parts:

Part 1: Profits and Losses — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVbbFVKWdhI

Part 2: Variety of Options — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFoqXD_o6Wc

As I have argued, the economic calculation problem isn't something that can be solved via technology, here is an example provided by Kevin D. Williamson in his book, 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism' that explains why:
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"Milk, imagine what it would take in terms of sheer information to run a socialist redistribution network for milk in the United States. Some people, such as vegans or the lactose intolerant consume no milk, but some households consume large quantities of the drink; those with many kids, those who use lots of milk products in their cooking, etc. Others may consume varying amounts; in July when it’s hot and humid, a family might prefer lemonade but it might consume a lot of milk in August if it’s whipping up a bunch of ice cream for a big family reunion.

"In addition to quantity calculations, there are various questions to answer to; whole milk or skimmed; 1 percent or 2 percent; do you prefer more expensive organic milk or cheaper factory farmed milk and if you prefer the pricier organic stuff, how much more are you willing to pay for it? What about soy milk, chocolate milk, the delicious Pennsylvania Dutch treat known as Vanilla milk?

"There are 115 million households in the United States, if we imagine a weekly milk consumption budget for each of them, that’s 5.98 billion household weeks to plan for, adding in a fairly restrictive list of variables, call it 0 to 20 quartz a week, 4 levels of fat content; organic, non-organic; soy, dairy and 3 flavour options, you end up with around 6 trillion options to choose from.

"These are the choices facing our committee of central planners and let’s just assume that our central planners are the best and brightest that our world has to offer with the temperaments of angels totally unswayed by the quotidian concerns of politics or the influence of the various competing dairy lobbies, for instance; let’s assume they are not human beings as we know them to exist and that they have at their exposle a vast array of top flight supercomputers, if they took just one second to consider each of these options, it would take them 190,128 years just to run through the possibilities of 1 years milk consumption in the United States."
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As I have noted and what Mouthy Infidel is clueless about, Marx did NOT question; at what time is it valuable; where it is of value or even who it is valuable to. If he claims otherwise, he is twisting the entire Marxist Labour Theory of Value to suit his own deeply flawed agenda.

As mentioned, Marx viewed value as objective, I cover more on this in this video.

UPDATE: whilst I accept Adam Smith's Labour Theory of Value, a slight correction on my own argument is that the questions asked about to who, where, time and context was questioned by Mises. The argument, however, still remains the same.

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