Oligopsony comments on Examples of the Mind Projection Fallacy? - Less Wrong

12 Post author: fiddlemath 13 December 2011 03:27PM

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Comment author: Oligopsony 13 December 2011 08:19:15PM 2 points [-]

The Labor Theory of Value is a mind projection fallacy. Value is something that can only exist in minds, and if everyone were to suddenly change their minds about that which is valuable, all the labor in the world used to produce a previously desired product wouldn't mean a thing. Marxists recognize this, which is why they talk about "socially necessary labor-time," a self-defeating addendum if there ever was one.

Huge pet peeve: you're eliding between separate concepts in Marxian political economy. "Use value" has the referent of what you're calling "value;" while "value" simpliciter refers to SNLT. Of course if prior demand is a sufficiently poor estimator of future demand then LTV ceases to be a useful simplification of reality, but that's an empirical question.

Comment author: Swimmy 16 December 2011 06:19:56PM 2 points [-]

Hmm.

Oops!