Labor Theory Of Value

  

Categories: Econ, Financial Theory

You ever wonder why wine can be sold for as cheap as a couple dollars, and as much as thousands of dollars? Or how things get their prices at all? It’s kind of baffling if you try to think about how much goods and services are worth objectively.

The labor theory of value argues that the value of goods and services is more subjective than objective, and largely depends on the amount of labor required to make the good or do the service.

No, that doesn’t mean working slower will lead to increased prices for your goods, since someone else can work faster and sell the same good for cheaper. Rather, it’s the amount of labor that’s reasonable to produce whatever good...given the average production time and technology at the time. The more time and care that goes into making something, the more expensive it will be.

Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx cited the labor theory of value. Marx even went so far as to say that capital...the means of production...is just "accumulated labor," since all of the capital we have (think: buildings, equipment technology) is a result of past work.

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Econ: What is Specialization of Labor?21 Views

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and finance Allah shmoop What is specialization of labour All

00:08

right people While some of us are simply better at

00:11

math than others some of us are more creatively inclined

00:15

than others And some of us enjoy the social aspect

00:17

of a job While others prefer to be left alone

00:20

Teo titrate their chemicals and be left in peace and

00:23

quiet Well specialization of labour takes advantage of these differences

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creating more value and higher overall output Well then without

00:31

specialization classical economist Adam Smith the guy who made the

00:35

invisible hand a thing saw the specialization of labour as

00:40

the driving force for economic growth Think about it all

00:44

of the engineers designers and marketers who went into creating

00:47

the very device you're on right now because they're able

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to buy what they need to survive rather than fending

00:54

for themselves in the woods Well they can focus on

00:57

specialising their skills providing more value to the economy Hey

01:01

maybe that's myth Guy was on something right to really

01:04

see how much the specialization of labour affects the world

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let's imagine a world without it So first people would

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all be fending for themselves making their own clothes farming

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their own food cutting their cutlery making their own video

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gaming consoles and stuff like that but with specialization of

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labour Well it allows us to focus our individual attention

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in a particular specific area because other people specialize in

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other things taking care of those things for us We

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can also specialized for the rest of the market right

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Well we all become experts of some sort by doing

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our jobs and that activity increases productivity This is how

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specialization of labour gives us absolute advantage in the market

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We'Ll absolute advantages when one group can create a good

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or service using fewer resource is than another group Example

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If sewing Sally can so close with much less time

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than you can it benefits both you and sewing Sally

01:59

If if you just let her make the clothes and

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then buy them from her she's just plain better It's

02:05

sowing than you are so it's best for both of

02:07

you this way on a global scale Specialization of labour

02:10

gives us this absolute advantage For example southeastern Asian countries

02:14

will always be better pineapple and mango producers than North

02:18

American countries Global trade combined with specialization Let's each of

02:23

us produce what we produce best and that benefits everyone

02:26

Okay Second say goodbye to your smartphone computer refrigerator water

02:31

heater air conditioners cars airplanes bikes and the Internet Without

02:34

specialization of labour nobody would have gone deep enough in

02:38

the technological stack to make let alone imagine the technology

02:42

we have today So yesterday's technology breathes could graze the

02:46

much more advanced technology which then breeds more human capital

02:50

or intellectual capital Right Think about labor in terms of

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opportunity Cost Is your time more valuable doing your job

02:57

Or is it more valuable forging steel into the shape

03:01

of a fork Well this is the stuff of comparative

03:04

advantage When a group or person can make a product

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or service at a lower opportunity cost then can another

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group or person Well even if you figured out how

03:13

to whip up a crappy fork how many lost hours

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is that that you could have spent doing your job

03:19

But you're actually good at like how much money did

03:21

you lose tryingto make a four We're not saying you

03:24

shouldn't go fork forging or fishing or whatever thing it

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is that you might do for fun that you aren't

03:28

very good at But we are saying that the value

03:31

that specialization of labour creates can be easily seen Once

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you think about it in terms of opportunity cost well

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a chef can provide a ton of value at a

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restaurant Well that same chef Yeah not very much value

03:43

Add at a technology firm A tech bro can provide

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Aton of value with the tech firm like Keats are

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us But those people well they don't add much value

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at a construction site All right what about a lawyer

03:54

who can type faster than her secretary Should she just

03:57

do all that typing herself No because a lawyer's time

04:01

is better spent loitering than it is typing Which is

04:04

why she hired her secretary in the first place Typing

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is just a bad use of her way more valuable

04:10

time right Even if the lawyer is better a typing

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than her secretary that opportunity costs for her secretary Typing

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is much lower than it is for her loitering Well

04:19

comparative advantage shows us how specialization can help us all

04:23

add value to the market even though each have different

04:26

skills and skill levels Well the more specialized we all

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are at what we d .'Oh well them or others

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are willing to pay for that specialization and the more

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value we're providing to each other within the economy While

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specialization of labour has created a lot of value not

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everyone's a fan Critics have cited that a too high

04:43

a level of specialization can lead Toa unhappy workers and

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burn out probably does In fact the forty hour work

04:51

week became a thing on Lee after factory worker burnout

04:54

at the Ford factory caused extremely high turnover rate As

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benefits of specialization spread globalisation started to make more and

05:02

more economic sense because the specialization of labour provide so

05:05

much more value to the economy than well if we

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were all a bunch of hermits you know forging her

05:10

hone forks it's profitable to make things in one country

05:13

and ship them halfway around the world to be sold

05:15

in another country Absolute and comparative advantage make global trading

05:19

like this oh so worth it So today we can

05:22

see that event Siri's in the extreme With giants like

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Amazon Walmart and Ali expressed facilitating globalization spreading the economic

05:31

fruits of specialisation on the insanely useful and maybe scary

05:34

We've got machines learning algorithms and artificial intelligence in the

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works On the of course that's a thing side While

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we've got heated driveways monster energy sliced ham and eighty

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five dollars rock in a bag a toothpaste squeezer and

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other things you didn't need to know that existed All

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right just moving right along here people Where's

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