Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Are those who obtain more income better in some way, perhaps more intelligent than others? Are they luckier? According to Ludwig Von Mises, they are superior in intelligence: "The entrepreneur is the agency that prevents the persistence of a state of production unsuitable to fill the most urgent wants of the consumers in the cheapest way. All people are anxious for the best possible satisfaction of their wants and are in this sense striving after the highest profit they can reap. The...

Marx writes about rent extensively in Part II of Theories of Surplus Value and in volume 3 of Capital. I read Theories of Surplus Value decades ago. I have been trying to read the chapters of volume 3 on rent, that is, chapters 37 to 47. In general, these chapters do not use Hegelian terminology, but are just a matter of mathematical economics. Marx conflates analyses I would keep separate. Maybe this is a matter of a dynamic analysis set in historical time. I suppose I do not have...

Figure 1: Variation of Technique with Relative Markups "That 'diminishing returns' was not an essential element in the surplus-based theory emerged in Marx's criticisms of Ricardo. Sraffa (1960), in his short chapter on land, the implications of which have yet to be developed, shows how the classical view of rents need not necessarily rest on the conception of 'the law of diminishing returns' or need not suggest necessarily any functional relationship between output and cost, or even presume...

I want to note some instances in the literature that argue that one strain in the marginal revolution was an extension of (a misunderstanding of) the theory of intensive rent in classical political economy to all factors of production, particularly capital. This this is not of only historical interest. It suggests that another approach, that of classical political economy, to value and distribution exists. Furthermore, a treatment of intensive rent exists that is opposed to marginalism, in...

Figure 1: Order of Rentability Varying with Relative Markups1.0 Introduction Ownership is not productive, as Joan Robinson informs us. But, at least under competitive conditions one might hope, more productive assets earn their owners more than less productive assets. And this applies to scarce skills as well. But none of this is necessarily true, either. This article presents a numerical example in which, among scarce lands, rent per acre is higher on more fertile land only when...

[embedded content]The Start Of This Video Is An Anecdote About George Dantzig1.0 Introduction Ludwig Von Mises popularized the Socialist Calculation Problem and brought it to wider attention. (This problem is also known as the Economic Calculation Problem.) In Von Mises' 1920 paper, he argues rational economic planning is impossible without market prices for capital goods and unproduced resources. Thus, anybody advocating socialism is advocating a system that cannot obtain a high material...

I have been (re?-)transcribing various letters in which various points of Marxism are elaborated. This post is an index of what I have so far. I do not know that I will go on much. Marx to Engels, 2 August 1862, sets out the transformation problem and Marx's solution. Marx to Engels, 18 June 1867, on the order of presentation in Capital. Marx to Engels, 24 August 1867, on the two best points in volume 1 of Capital. Marx to Engels, 8 January 1868, on three original points in volume 1...

I have a research program that I have been pursuning for several years. And I seem to be able to go on for several more years. I have been looking at the analysis of the choice of technique in models of the production of commodities by means of commodities. Fluke cases are characterized as losing their qualitative properties with almost any perturbation of the parameters of the model. The parameter spaces in these models are partitioned by these fluke cases. Within a region formed by the...

1.0 Introduction I have decided that this previous post is inadequate. If intensive rent exists on some type of land, the system of equations for prices of production cannot include a process that only partially cultivates some other type of land producing the agricultural commodity. So to form an example with both intensive and extensive rent, I need the technology to specify the possibility of cultivating at least three types of land. I might as well include markup pricing so as to...

[embedded content]Randall Wray on MMT. (About 40:55: Most economics is "fraud". Lots of ads.)Jason Blakely, Doctor's orders: COVID-19 and the new science wars, in Harper's Matias Vernengo of Bidenomics. Economists in Chicago cannot stomach the slightest dissent on antitrust. Mario Tronti, 24 July 1931 - 7 August 2023. A republished essay in New Left Review. Deepankar Basu, 2022. A Reformulated Version of Marx’s Theory of Ground-Rent Shows that there Cannot be any Absolute Rent....