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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

If your example isn't scarcity I don't know what to tell you, if better wine is "scarce" those labors are what is needed to make better wine.

Explain how it is possible, and how the situation does not immediately solve itself with you stopping doing something you hate and are bad at.

As many have pointed out, "value" is subjective. Your terrible wine may be loved by someone. Or you may really enjoy making wine. As wine has zero intrinsic value, it is a luxury good, it's very possible for both wines to be just as valuable.

It has plenty of meaning, it just doesn't explain "profit."

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One wine being generally better than another, is not about 'scarcity'.

Yes - of course people will have differing opinions - but aggregate market demand can be different for something made with the same amount of labour - that is not an issue of scarcity.

i.e. 'most people' can view one wine as better than the other with equal amounts of labour.

Again - surely you can, if you want get into issues of 'scarcity' i.e. you can talk about production volumes etc. but that's kind of a second order issue.

I also found the wine example peculiar, as good wine and scarce wine aren't often the same, but I kept with it as it was brought up. Mistakenly I thought you had brought it up, sorry.

"Aggregate market demands" are capitalism, where wine is a status symbol and "good" wine generally refers to price. You are continuing to view this only in the eyes of capitalism and considering "value" to include "profit."

""Aggregate market demands" are capitalism, where wine is a status symbol and "good" wine generally refers to price"

No - what I meant by 'aggregate market demand' was really just 'average price / perception of value' - and 'good' does not refer to 'price' - good wine literally is better.

I am not equating value and profit. I am equating value and price.

Some goods are generally better than others (i.e. most people will think one is better than the other) and require the same labour - this is my point - and it's unrelated to scarcity.

Like I said, someone else brought up the wine example and I just continued it despite finding it clumsy.

Price is value plus profit, thats the only reason to distinguish between the two.

I think my original point about wine was misunderstood. Good wine is not good because it is scarce, it is good because it is good, but it is more expensive because it is scarce.

If you could produce infinite quantities of Chateau-Petrus, it would be extremely cheap. But since it depends on being produced at a specific location, with a specific know-how, the quantities are limited. In this case, the amount of labour involved has little effect on the price of the wine.

First, and this isn't really relevant, price and scarcity play a much bigger role in what is considered "good wine" than you're saying.

Back on topic, "expensive" and "price" again add the concept of profit to the value produced. The only value of wine is enjoyment, so even Petrus wine has little more value than similar wines.

That increase in value is largely labor from learning the trade and long running slow maintenance. The only part that is scarce is the soil composition, something that could be recreated with a large amount of labor. Similarly, discovering that that area produced quality wine was labor intensive as well.

" Good wine is not good because it is scarce, it is good because it is good, but it is more expensive because it is scarce."

No - not at all.

Good wine can be 'more expensive' simply because it is better!

There's more willingness to pay, i.e. better demand curve!

Doesn't need to be less supply!

Point being: not all labour is equal, ergo, the idea of something being valued upon the 'amount of labour' put into it is really not useful.

I am not doing a strong job explaining this subject, but you are dismissing it out of hand without an understanding of it. I recommend taking codemac's advice and reading some of Marx's work. Even if you disagree with him it provides a greater understanding of how the economy works.

I did read it (a long time ago) and I don't agree with him.

I just don't believe the labour theory of value is a useful concept.

I don't think Marx provides any understanding of how the economy works - other than to hint strongly that prices are really a function of power - i.e. when one group has a monopoly on some critical thing, i.e. land or capital, then they can use that to leverage over another group, and then you have basically class struggle.

I mean, it's useful rhetoric, I'm not sure if it's useful theory.

In my opinion, you don't even need Marx for this. Even Jeff Bezos reportedly said "your margin is my opportunity". So if some product is expensive without being scarce, it is probably being "protected" by likely unethical means (like copyright?) or an oligopoly (unions?) that keeps prices artificially high.

Sorry if this missed the mark completely. Would love to learn.

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