Does Labor Really Create All Wealth?
Supposedly, labor creates all wealth by turning raw material (iron ore) into finished products (cars, shovels, guns to blow you away with, etc.). But will this always be true?
There could be fully mechanized factories producing goods that use supplies from other mechanized operations further up the supply chain. The only human role is to consume the goods and services the robots produce.
Does this scheme invalidate Marx's theory of labor value? ***
Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant?
I own a very large computer and server farm. With this equipment (which was manufactured in fully automated factories using robots) I provide a vast array of services which make me very rich.
New software is needed, periodically. The powerful computers are able to write new software as needed. I buy replacement parts for my operations from fully mechanized factories. Workers do not make my equipment or software. I have no labor costs.
There could be fully mechanized factories producing goods that use supplies from other mechanized operations further up the supply chain. The only human role is to consume the goods and services the robots produce.
Does this scheme invalidate Marx's theory of labor value? ***
***One of the cornerstones of Marxian economics was Karl Marx’s ideas around the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value argues that the value of a commodity is determined by the average amount of time needed to produce the commodity. An example of the labor theory of value would be if a t-shirt takes half the time to make as a hat, the hat would be priced at two times the t-shirt.
Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant?
Comments (52)
Yes. Sadly this what will happen in the future. Probably a lot of jobs we are consider as ordinary today will be extinguished in some years. I guess those automation machines would attack practical jobs as waiters, manufacturers, farmers, etc... just because their bosses or businessmen will want have something or someone to make exactly the same but cheaper. It is interesting this fact because they already do so... if we go to Bangladesh or India most of the businessmen go there due to cheap manufacture and child labor. But with automation machines they would produce everything in their own country and FREE.
So yes... it will make disappear a lot of jobs or at least make them irrelevant.
It is true this is an interesting theory about Marx but I think he forgot something important according to value: material and handmade. Probably this t-shirt took half time to made it but imagine is made of good cotton and with hands of professional. This is forced to be more expensive than the hat.
To use an English expression, one can make a purse out of silk or make it out of a sow's ear. Or to be more precise, try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Moving on from the pig pen...
The thing is, whether it is a fine Egyptian long-fiber cotton T shirt or a ratty polyester one, a certain amount of time is required to make it. Same for the hat, whether it is $9.99 hat or a $99 hat, depending on time/labor inputs.
It seems to me that a large portion of the world's work force will be increasingly irrelevant as automation, robotics, AI, and the like advance. I've had some clerical jobs that I would have happily handed over to a machine to do. (I hate detail work)
How much extra would you pay to have an actual bartender mix your drink rather than a very reliable drink-mixing machine? Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please.
Ricardo and Marx, primitives that they were, referenced actual live human labor, not automated machines. It is true, though, that machines impart some of their cost and value to the goods produced.
Agreed. Of course I prefer human jobs or at least being with natural workers. You put the perfect job example here: bartender.
Sadly, these kind of jobs will suffer lack of stability in the future due to AI. I would prefer being around humans not only for a lively experience but an ethical criteria.
We cannot create a big unemployment ratio for those which have "low academical level" just because is cheaper having AI
Then that is a job that still calls for human labor -- the emotional labor of being a friendly person to talk to, even if the actual drink-making part of the job is automated away. If people prefer to have a drink somewhere that there's a live bartender to chat to, they will patronize the places where a live bartender pushes the make-me-a-beer button for you, instead of places where you push it yourself and then sit alone with your own thoughts wallowing in sadness and spoiled barley water.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think there's a couple of different things to be teased apart in this topic. One is the nature of wealth in the abstract, what makes something of value in general? The other is the question of where humans fit into that abstract picture.
I think I'll just quote myself from a recent thread of my own for my answer to that first question:
Quoting Pfhorrest
That last part then begins to segue into the second question above: where do humans fit into that abstract picture of wealth and value? In a capitalist economy, where all the capital is owned by a small fraction of the populace, the only thing of value most people have to offer in trade with the capitalist class is their labor. If machines obviate the need for labor, then most people cease to have value to the capitalist class, which poses the threat of an enormous problem, if most people have nothing to offer the parasites who claim ownership of the whole world in exchange for the right to use some of that world.
One solution to that problem could be a socialist revolution, seizing the means of production by state force. Maybe a relatively peaceful revolution, if enough people can be convinced by their own eminent starvation and homelessness to actually use the levers of democracy sensibly to make the state act in the common interest; but also maybe a more violent one, if the threat of eminent starvation and homelessness pisses enough people off enough.
However, circling back around to the abstract topic of theory of value, if machines obviate the need for labor, then cost of new machines is free (it takes no labor to make another one), and the value of yet another machine to someone who already has one is also zero (it saves no more labor to have more automation than you need), so the price of those excess machines should tend to zero, as there's nothing lost by just giving them away, letting all the poor people who used to have nothing but labor have a free automaton, since it costs the rich nothing to just let them do that. And it might save them the costs associated with a revolution of starving homeless masses.
That of course depends on the capitalist class acting even in their own rational self-interest, which I'm not completely convinced is something that can be counted on, since many people of all classes seem happy to cut off their own noses just to spite someone else's face.
Until the robots takeover, are humans being exploited as a unit of labor, if only because the conditions of being born demand it? How is not being born, knowingly as a future laborer to be a unit of utility to an entity not unjust? Marx wasn't radical enough as he focused on the economic system in place and did not drill deeper to realizing that the exploitation starts by being born at all. If only he realized the nascent antinatalism in his ideas of exploitation.
Humans are the only animals that need justifications, not just incentives to do work. We are running out of anchorings and slogans to keep the justifications going. It is now the barest of reasons..you were born and need to survive and be comfortable which work affords you to do to keep you doing generally the same thing the next day.
If robots produce all the goods, and humans need not work, then the price will be zilch. Indeed, people will take what they want or need, and don't have to pay for it. (Eventually.)
Thus the value will be still the inherent utility of the product; but the price will still remain at the Marxian definition: zero human time spent with producing the goods, zero price paid for it. Notwithstanding the good's utility value.
By-the-by, Marx's vision of ultimate communism depends on robotism.
My addition to this is that robotism also renders the hierarchy of people null and void. Marx declared that it is the proletariat that ought to own the production machinery and factories. They did in my home country back 40-80 years ago, when I defected. But the impression was never, NEVER in the people that they owned the factories. They had to go in and work and get paid and do what the boss told them.
This was the ultimate problem with socialist systems, who openly pursued the ideal of communism. Sang ever so eloquently by the rock group, The Who:
"Meet the new boss!
Same as the old boss!"
To be completely frank, it was more screamed than sung.
But anyway, the lesson is that complex production needs complex work arrangements, which necessitates a hierarchy of work-related duties including planning and slotting people into doing their jobs. This was the crux that made people throw away communist rule: they worked just like their counterparts in the free west (free? ha!), and yet they lived in abject poverty compared to the same, and had to listen to the same bullshit at work.
Robotism will do away with all that.
Ironically enough, the Who's recording of the song was used in a car commercial. Meet the new Nissan, same as the old Nissan.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Lemme give you a value theory answer: no, so long as human labour is required in the production process, that socially necessary labour will be distributed/re-appropriated through the ownership of automatons.
Lemme give you a less value theory answer: probably not, so long as labour's price is kept down by disciplinary measures. Lots of work being done now could be automated, but it's cheaper for owners (short term) not to.
Let us say the prevention of the next generation solves the problem in one generation. Simply don't produce more people that need to labor, and problem solved. No relying on a utopian future which is undetermined and where the goalposts are always moving further out. No people that need goods and services. It's too late for the current generation, why not spare others the "joy" of laboring in some economic system, capitalist, communist, hunting-gathering, whatever.
In regards to automation, Marx actually did discuss it conceptually in the Grundrisse. I will place together some selected quotes from the short section, Contradiction between the Foundation of Bourgeois Production (value as measure) and its Development. Machines etc.:
To paraphrase, what Marx is saying is that as Capitalism continues to develop labor-saving technology, Capitalists can invest more in fixed capital (i.e. Machines) here also referred to as "Objectified Labor" rather than "Living Labor" (i.e. the workers). The end result of this potential process would be solely automated production. But, this in turn would transform the Labor Theory of Value as well into something applicable in a post-Capitalist society when living labor i.e. the working class is rendered moot in the production process.
Marx continues:
This is such an interesting passage. Marx is saying here that on one side automated machinery can create wealth regardless of labor time (i.e. necessary labor time) that is employed into the production process. But on the other hand, Capital still seeks to measure value (and as a corollary, price, and wealth) based on necessary labor time. Capital, according to Marx, "becomes a moving contradiction that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth."
This contradiction leads to a material condition which can "blow this foundation sky-high", in other words the Labor Theory of Value becomes irrelevant, we've moved past it to something else! A Theory of Value based on automated machine power.
But this poses a looming question and places humanity at an important crossroad. Who owns the automated machinery and as a corollary, who owns the profits and wealth created by the machines? If they are owned by a minority of Capitalists then we may have something that looks similar to Blade Runner, where mega-trillionaires own the vast majority of wealth, most people are unemployed and are sustained through a measly Andrew Yang-style UBI at the cost of public support. If they are owned by the people, with the created wealth flowing back to the public, maybe we can see a more Star Trek like society where everyone's needs are met, housing, food, health etc., with disposable time open up to free development, personal, intellectual, social etc.
Marx continues in this section to say:
Wealth here isn't the accumulation of profits, or commodities etc., it is the disposable time "for every individual and the whole of society" beyond what is required by individuals in the production process.
All wealth? Goldman Sachs doesn't create wealth?
No. You will need even more workers to make sure the machines don't break. Or workers to make sure the machines that make sure the other machines don't break, don't break. As systems become more complex, the amount of effort required to maintain them tends to increase.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Back in the day when farms were shifting from horses to machines, about 1/3 of the population was engaged in farming--32,000,000. Today there are about 2,000,000. Are you saying that there are many millions of people repairing the machinery used by 2 million farmers? That just doesn't seem plausible.
In any town in agricultural areas one will find a few equipment sellers and a number of people engaged in service and repair--not a large number in absolute or relative terms. Of course, farmers do some repair themselves.
Thank you.
My point is its all connected, but I get how superficially it might look like its not. The problem of labor can be solved other than with robots and Marx missed the biggest point of all..not putting more workers in the system in the first place. But thats the last I'll put in this thread. Systematic holistic philosophy is only as good as the things it decides to consider. Economic conditions aren't a straightup demand supply, whathaveyou, it is existential. In some ways, he understood economics to be more than mere models, but connected to history and the human condition. For example, his end goal was a new man not fettered by the needs of being exploited by their labor. But im taking an existential step beyond this. I'm asking if being born, we can ever escape not being exploited at all. If he focused on this idea of man being exploited by their labor value, then it is relevant. So I'm just saying in his analysis of what causes this negative outcome, he overlooked some things. Certainly, until the robots are complete, from now to them, how is adding more laborers not itself a kind of exploitative aspect for those people? It is relevant to Marx but was too far afield for it to even be close to the radar..he was too attached to economic answers only. And my suggestion too radical. How ironic.
Does this scheme invalidate Marx's theory of labor value?
Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant?
Nothing about antinatalism is even remotely relevant to these questions. So if you don't have anything to add, just read.
One can only hope. I mean that in the sense that if robots produce everything, and since they don't have needs, we can finally create the communist utopia where each receives in accordance with their needs. And we'll have all the time in the world to pursue our personal interests, which may include working, like pursuing arts and crafts, teaching others, studying, making music, dancing, hobbies, relationships...
Ah, I can smell true freedom on the air. If only we'll manage to distribute the wealth robots create properly among everyone.
I think that's true of Marx, but do we have any reason to believe it's true of reality?
Quoting Maw
If we grant that there is a tendency toward automation (which there seems to be) and that this does reduce the amount of productive* labour required for the reproduction of the working class as much as it can, that still leaves open the possibility that there is a lower limit of that process of production - a non-zero asymptotic socially necessary labour time for the labourer's good basket, which suffices to sustain the dynamics modelled by the labour theory of value long term - keeping the engine of capitalism going.
*constraining productive to be meant in a physicalist sense since the SNLT reduction is unambiguously true in that sense - stuff which counts as a commodity has a physical body => productive labour produces expendable goods.
Yes: automated factories producing goods to satisfy the needs of people, rather than for producing profit, would liberate us to pursue fulfillment rather than dreary work (work is not always dreary, but it usually is, sooner rather than later).
Actually, I don't see any reason for capitalists to automate all production (which they alone would control) because their wealth is extracted from the workers. Unemployed workers can't buy much, and several billion unemployed workers is a hazard they would not prudently allow.
Unless, of course, they could eliminate workers altogether. Capitalism is perfectly capable of disposing of workers. The American rust belt has been the site of large scale worker disposal. It's not pretty. These people have sunk into poverty rather than seize the means of production. (Had they seized anything they probably would have been shot.).
Capitalists could operate the worker-free factories to meet the minimum needs of the unnecessary workers--as protection, not out of the goodness of their hearts--but why would they if they they could find a [i]long-term solution to the existence of unneeded workers[/I]?
Quoting fdrake
Eliminating all labor through automation would be a colossal blunder on the part of capitalism. We are aware, are we not, that capitalists are perfectly capable of Colossal Blunders? They would destroy the model that creates their wealth and power--without another model in sight. They might fantasize a world of Alpha Plus people (Brave New World) without the plague of betas, deltas, and epsilons, but achieving it would be inordinately messy.
Of course not, and I'm pretty skeptical about the technological viability of automation or AI. And I don't think that Marx is saying this is an inevitability either, but rather a tendency by virtue of investing towards labor saving fixed capital. There are of course numerous counterforces that can push back against this tendency, the most obvious being a majority wage labor population.
A real world example of this tendency towards fixed capital contra workers, along with my following skepticism on how fully viable the former is, is Uber, which has fought tooth-and-nail to declassify their US drivers from employees to contractors, exempting full employee benefits they would otherwise receive, while simultaneously investing in AI technology for self-driving cars, according to Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick back in 2014:
Uber has never been profitable, and there doesn't appear to be any road to profitability other than diminishing costs for Uber drivers to the point of eliminating them.
However, self-driving vehicles seem like a sci-fi delusion to me. And maybe it appears to be a delusion Uber too since they sold their autonomous vehicle division several months ago, and that even if it were technologically feasible operating costs might be too cumbersome to drive profitability.
Yes. A technology where robots could replace themselves and produce other machines without involving human labor is imaginable, but is more in the realm of science fiction (at this time). The robots we use have narrow application. We don't have plenipotentiary robots, yet. A robot's fully autonomous production reaches back to mining ores, mining and refining oil, creating complex raw and finished materials, and so on.
Humans are fully capable of doing all these things--and, of course, have been doing them for a long time.
Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense.
Still, their are companies pursuing what is either a delusion or a premature technology.
Quoting Bitter Crank
This is sort of the Uber view -- labor is an unnecessary expense. But in reality labor is essential to their model.
What makes Uber and Lyft workable at all is a large enough number of workers with inadequate income and a willingness to spend a lot of time in traffic with no guarantee of enough ride orders to make it worth the time. Lyft and Uber are post-great recession companies, becoming 'popular' about 8 or 9 years ago.
I use Lyft 2 or 3 times a month for trips where public transit takes too long. Maybe taxi companies have acquired the kind of software that makes Lyft workable--knowing how long the car's arrival will be, and knowing how much the ride will cost.
Sure, irrational exuberance
?
This is about Marxist theory.
Not about reali... hm, better leave it to that.
I see.
Didn't people have a lot more free time back in the day? It seems like to me that the machines that we use in agriculture (etc) require a more complex society, with everyone working more. Or perhaps rather, just more people. Instead of most everyone working the fields, there is a minority of farmers who use equipment, which is manufactured in a factory the employs many people, which gets materials from other factories, etc.
No. Taking a typical 19th century early 20th century midwestern farm as an example... Back in the day, there were still only 24 hours in a day. Prior to mechanization, farmers milked their cows by hand. This was time consuming and has to be done twice a day, 12 hours apart. Plowing fields, planting, and cultivating fields with horse power took considerably more time than when using a tractor. Making hay; threshing oats, barley, or wheat were all labor intensive and took quite a bit of time. Rather than a multi-day 4 step process to harvest grain back in the day, big combines now do it all in one pass, and keep track of yield by the square yard. Caring for horses, cattle, hogs, birds, or sheep; tending fences; maintaining buildings, etc. were year round projects. Yes, there were lulls in the flow of work--in the winter, especially; then after spring planting there would be a short respite. Once the crop was too high to cultivate, another short respite. Then the harvests would begin, which takes us back to late autumn and winter.
A farmer probably has more free time today. If he has a small not-terribly-profitable farm, he and/or his wife will probably work for a wage in town to balance their budget.
Quoting darthbarracuda
"Society" was no less complex 100 years ago. Most people generally worked longer hours 100-140 years ago -- between 8 to 10 hours. a day, 5.5 to 6 days a week. Almost everything--housekeeping to manufacturing farm equipment, involved a lot more physical labor. Technology became progressively more complex throughout the 19th century.
People work less per unit of output now than they did 100 years ago, thanks to gains in efficiency, automation, administration, technology, and so on. People seem to be spending at least the same amount of time at work despite more efficiency. [Parkinson's Law corollary: a worker can stretch a given amount of work to fill the available time.]
Compare the dinky horse-powered harvest machine [below] with the John Deere monster. The horse-powered machine increased the farmer's efficiency considerably. The machine was probably manufactured in Chicago, shipped to Minneapolis by rail, might have been sold at a warehouse showroom, then shipped to South Dakota by another railroad, to be picked up by the buyer when he got back home.
The John Deere machine might be purchased by a company providing harvesting services and would harvest many fields of wheat, corn, or whatever crop it was suited for. These machines make no financial sense on a farm of 2 or 3 hundreds of acres. These big machines can mow down thousands of acres a day.
There was a big change in land ownership over the 20th century (to very large acreages) which required these giant machines.
An intriguing question. I can only guess--no definitive answer from me.
The quality of life plays a role here: A population can increase without necessitating more advanced (hardware) technology. It probably can't increase beyond a certain point or improve it's quality of life without more technology. Advancing technology may require more population. The industrial revolution required many new workers drawn from somewhere--hence an increase in the population. Better transportation, more efficient mines, factories, etc. requires more people to consume the bounty of goods produced. If the goods don't get consumed, the economy fails; a given population can consume only so much.
Were we to have a stable world population, we would have to be very careful about what technology was introduced.
I posit that as new methods of increasing material gain are made available to us, as well as an automation of those processes which have hitherto been within the domain of physical labor, that those soaring inequities which now plague so many millions will reach a tipping-point; I posit it as such that those representatives who have been bought off by either corporate interests or who are of a legitimate delusion in the belief that a sustained redistribution of wealth would somehow be of detriment to the poor and downtrodden, rather than a necessary act of remediation, that either they will acquiesce to this demand, or otherwise in consequence of the extent of the issue, given that there is no sign of this trend reversing anytime soon, that they will be forcibly overthrown. After all, it isn't difficult to see that throughout history when man's material needs are left unfulfilled, and whereby he has remained patient for so long under the assumption that his circumstances will not be improved upon overnight, that eventually his capacity for a further such exercise will shatter, most likely through some instigating event and thereafter what shall be centered foremost on his mind is that great injustice which ails him. What he is sure to then seek, isn't simply that right of a livable circumstance which he was denied, but an enemy onto which he may direct his frustrations; whether this be the state or a particular individual it doesn't matter, insofar as he feels gratified because of the fact.
That for nearly half a century within the United States, and elsewhere, so large a portion of national wealth has been allowed to concentrate within the hands of so very few, is sure to entail not merely disagreement, or incivility, but is precisely that which the historical record has shown it to be; a probable cause both of war, and social decline. The abundance of misinformation which now dominates within the field of media and public discourse, and has assumed center-stage in the minds of many others is most contributive to this dysfunction, also. Though, even this portrayal of mine, and what the future of these inequities of ours may consist in, overlooks that our world's productive capacity is already running a deficit of nearly two-fold that which it is able to sustain, without in turn suffering ecological damage, and eventually, collapse. Yet, the status quo continues in its course, unremarked upon, in the face of both climatic instability, loss of habitable land on the order of millions of acres each year, and the extirpation of species upon which we have a fair degree of reliance, and which have up to this point existed as ambassadors of the natural state of things for many millions of years, far before our genetic ancestors even ventured onto solid-land. I am doubtful we will ever have the foresight necessary to reverse our march toward the abyss, our consignment of posterity to the gutter, or ever reflect on the misguidedness of appealing so completely to short-term gains knowing what the consequences of which, are. An unrelenting consumption is thus the purpose of this economic-gamble, and once we have consumed all in our path, we will in our helplessness know only hunger from that time forward. Then, a mightiest despair, until nothing but silence remains.
On a final note, as I just recently celebrated my second decade of life and am therefore relatively young still, I have reason to envy those who are as of this moment in their final years because they will, and much unlike myself, be spared the sight of those more extreme conditions of instability that will become ever more dominant and deafening to every other concern before the end of the century. Except for those with both a proper recognition of where our future will lead, and the ability to attest first-hand to those difficulties which are most affecting of members of my generation, no one will understand how very loathing I am of the fact of being a millennial, and just as well how very resentful I am of those who in their ignorance, and continued misjudgment, scarred the face of our world so completely as to leave it in so much worse a state than when they first inherited it.
Otherwise, technological advancement and increased prosperity means usually that population growth decreases: well off people have less children. Children aren't there to take care of you at old age and not there to work on the field.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think this is a bit backward. The industrial revolution meant more jobs in new industries, which had higher wages for those working on the fields in the countryside. If factories are built and operate means that there have been enough people with the needed skills in the job market already. Population growth and demographic transitions take a long time.
Mali can have a large growing young population, but no semiconductor plants will spring up there as simply there aren't enough skilled people in the workforce to operate a semiconductor plant. If there would be with such a workforce with low African salary levels there, manufacturers would be in a frenzy to shift their production to Mali. Yet something like making clothes might something that the population could do (yet unfortunately the country is landlocked with minimal infrastructure). This is why textile industry is typically the first industry to start the industrial revolution from an agrarian country to an industrial country.
(Scotsman James Finlayson built a textile factory in Tampere, Finland in 1820. It became at one time the largest textile manufacturing plant in the Nordic countries, if I remember correctly. Reason: very cheap labour, cheapest in the Nordic countries, even if part of Russia back then.)
:up:
I think CEO tech bros might fantasise that workless world, but other people don't (in the short term). Sweat shops don't seem to automate like factories do - so long as it's prohibitively expensive or pointless to automate in these places, the global circuit of production will redistribute value created by labour.
I think it comes down to a question of whether the fever dreams of Elon Musk resemble reality more than 1800's factory-scapes with loads of worker control.
Quoting Bitter Crank
But I think, closer to the OP, the scheme hypothetically would invalidate the labour theory of value; that theory seems to require that some people are working. In a hypothetical world where supply chains are all fully automated, that doesn't seem to hold.
I don't think labor has much power anywhere in the world, and that's all capitalists care about since excessive power on their part limited capital accumulation during the oil supply shock of the 70s. Automation was part of that shift.
The alternative to manufacturing is raiding. Capitalists weaponize investment by lending to small countries which are vulnerable to American interest rates. They wait for the target to head toward default, then come in and make changes that facilitate the raiding of whatever wealth that population has.
It sounds like this would be a short term strategy, but it's been going on for a while now.
Correct me if I’m missing something. Wikipedia seems to describe Marx’s ideas to be more complex than that. It describes that Marx believed that an object’s value is based on the amount of labor it took to create it with respect to how much society values that labor. So your example is only true if society demanded the labor for both T-shirt making and hat making equally.
An interesting addenda to the way capital allows you to do more work with less labor is theories on labor substitution. Major construction projects in the developing world still use manpower for tasks like excavating. It's not that place like India can't get backhoes or build their own, it's that labor is so cheap there that it is little incentive to modernize.
The problem is that increasing pay and safety for workers makes capital more appealing.
You summed that up very efficiently. What needs to follow is taxing this labor, because when machines replace humans who must pay income taxes, the government loses revenue, right?.
I want to see if I understand you correctly. When millions of people want T-shirts that increase the value of the T-shirt. If only a few people wear hats, they don't have much value. Is that right according to the theory?
When Russia was coming out of communism I thought they didn't get things exactly right. Potatoes should be very cheap so everyone can afford them. However, when the potatoes are processed to be instant potatoes or potato chips, you can charge as much as the market can handle without hurting the need to feed people. Changing the raw potato is value-added. Is that right?
Except the US government can buy the potatoes and turn them into instant potatoes increasing their shelf life and this surplus of potatoes reduces the cost. That is supply and demand, right?
When 500 people in a factory can produce many times more product than individuals working alone n small shops, the cost of labor is low and so the price of the product. Some products would be unaffordable without factories making mass production possible. How does Marx handle that?
Oh ouch, labor-intense societies do not enjoy a lot of free time. Before we perfected our machinery, people, including children, worked 12 to 14 hour days, 7 days a week, for poverty wages, forcing the family to put their children into dangerous mines and factories.
:lol: Try growing a garden large enough to feed a family for a year and after harvesting it, preserve the food so it will last a year. This fun experiment is even better if you are a woman with children because then you must attend to them and clean the house and make the clothes by hand and make your own soap and do laundry by hand. Try that for about a year and then tell us about your free time.
:lol: Anyone who works that hard will need a vacation to recover.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Karl_Marx
I don't believe this. Humans write software. Computers execute it. That's because computers have no idea of the kinds of problems which unwritten software is intended to solve. The first step in any software development is a specification, and computers are not able to supply that, because they have no needs.
Nope.
https://www.wired.com/story/googles-learning-software-learns-to-write-learning-software/
Why wouldn't they?
I can think of several reasons why they would...
They might like the company - unpredictable, quirky, and irrational as we are - or find us useful in some way and so benefit from our thriving.
They might develop random codes which get re-enforced in subsequent codes.
They might see not helping as simply entailing more uncertainty in complex environment than a more conservative approach.
It's like you're suggesting there aren't any good reasons for us to benefit other humans (if it weren't for strong moral codes prescribing that we should). If benefitting those who share our world is a good thing for all, then there's no reason at all why a computer wouldn't work that out.