Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

1.0 Introduction I have been reading fools in other parts of the Internet. Hence this post. 2.0 Assertions Marx says the following (I am least sure of 6): Both sides to an exchange gain. (Capital, volume 1, chapter 5) Nobody, neither consumers, nor workers, nor investors, nor the managers of firms, make decisions on the grounds of the labor time embodied in commodities. (Capital, volume 1, chapter 1, section4) Surplus value (dividends, interest, rent, etc.), in an ideal competitive...

I think most quote the first page of the Critique of the Gotha Program for Marx asserting this: "First part of the paragraph: 'Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture.' Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct...

Figure 1: Wage Curves For A Fluke Case1.0 Introduction This post examines perturbations around a fluke case in a model of intensive rent. The model illustrates an analysis of prices and the choice of technique in which the quantity of commodites produced matters. Yet the level and composition of net output are taken as given, independent of any variation, for example, from their dependence on distribution and relative prices. The model also illustrates a case in which prices of production...

This is another example of Engels explaining the theory of historical materialism. I know of this letter from Mills and Goldstick (1989). They also point out this letter from Engels. Here we see the metaphor of ideas "standing on their head", not in relation to Hegel's idealism, but as real economic relations reflected in finance. I like the emphasis on the interdependence of industries that could be expressed in Leontief matrices. Does this letter express a deterministic, strict dependence...

Figure 1: Structural Economic Dynamics of the Price of a New Machine I am not sure that there is any great insight here. But this post depicts the evolution of prices in an example which I have been explaining in two posts. For some parameters, I have found that a shorter economic life of a machine may be associated with a more capital-intensive technique around a switch point. This can occur at both a 'normal' and a 'perverse' switch point. This finding raises difficulties for tradional...

[embedded content]Does Learning How To Think In Coding Transfer More Generally?Another YouTube Video in the above series. I suspect some of us are not fans of some of those interviewed, although you must admit they changed the world. John Michael Colón, Wobbly Economics - Part I. A tribute to Fred Lee and an explanation of why you are right to distrust economists. Shattering 'Market Theory', an old post on Daily Kos, reporting a discussion on a private email list of one of my numeric...

Over years, I have considered how Marx continues and differs from classical political economy. I have also documented some foreshadowings and outlines of the transformation problem. This is another letter in a series In this letter, Marx alludes to prices of production and the transformation problem. Apparently, he thinks at this time that volumes 2 and 3 will be a single volume. Here he sets out three points which he thinks are original to the first volume of Capital. The first is that...

Figure 1: Variation of Switch Points with Technological Progress in Industry This post is an expansion on this post. Technological progress in industry, in which the machine is produced, can be illustrated in Figure 1 in the previous post by a movement roughly from off the graph to the upper right to below the lower left. More concretely, suppose each of the two non-zero coefficients of production in the machine industry decrease at a constant rate of σ0 and σ1 respectively. The two...

[embedded content]On Another Topic, with an Appearance by Rutger Bregman. This post does not answer the question, but merely provides a bibliography. I have not read everything below. I suppose this is something of a hodge podge. I include a book from Peter Kropotkin, even though it is much older than the remaining non-fiction works, since I am currently one third, maybe, through it. Novels (Ken Macleod, in The Cassini Division has a more complete list as chapter titles.) Edward Bellamy....

This is another letter in a series I have been transcribing in which Marx discusses Capital. In this letter, he says one of the two best points in his book is his discussion of labor expressed in use value or in exchange value. Since I have not read (an english edition of) the first edition, I cannot be sure of my ground here. Apparently, Marx revised Chapter 1 quite extensively among editions. Anyways, I think this expression of labor gets at the distinction between concrete and abstract...