• 7 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 15th, 2022

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  • No, specialization is fine. It’s just that, through the market, you lose track of how many people work for you.

    Let’s say you own an estate and have a gardener, a butler and a maid, it’s clear. It’s visible. You know it, they know it, your neighbours know it. If you, through the market, effectively consume 3 fte of (international) labour, you’re practically living the same aristocrat life, without realizing it.

    If this situation would be more visible, people might be more willing to vote for (internationally) redistributive politics?




  • Thanks for the reference, I’ve added the book to my reading list.

    However,knowing the price of commodities are more closely correlated with labor-time than with profits (or ‘markups’;

    I see. Assuming that prices are more mostly made up of labour costs (?), I “only” need to know the average hourly wage/salary in the supply chain-network of the products I consume could get me a rough estimate of the labour time that went into it.

    variations between prices and labor costs are, on average, 15%,

    Is this in Shaikh’s book? If so, do you maybe have a page reference for this? Do you mean that on average, prices are for 85% made up of labour costs? And the rest is profit [1] and rent [2]?

    [1] what workers effectively pay their bosses to be allowed to use their machines [2] what farmers need to pay to landowners to be able to use their land







  • This. It can take many shapes. Although I guess it is at odds with certain (ideological) sentiments, like valuing pluralism (which suggests respecting minority interests), valuing internal dissent, recognizing the value of mutually adhered to checks and balances (like separating the executive and the legislative part of government).