Labor vs Utility, an introduction

There is a remarkably common misconception about the Marxist Labor Theory of Value. It goes something along the lines of "the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor necessary for its production." The ensuing logic is that labor intensive commodities are more valuable and therefore cost more than easily produced commodities. This is simply false. 

The Labor Theory of Value begins at the assumption that the value of labor is equivalent to the value of the product of that labor, and assigns comparative value to other commodities according to the comparative value of the product of their production. When one value is decided, the other is equivalent. An example will help, even if the values themselves are unrealistic. 

Let's say it takes 9 hours to paint a house and 30 minutes to kill and butcher a chicken. The labor theory of value says that painting a house is equivalent to the butchering of 18 chickens. Note that the labor is equivalent, not the price (there is no price at the moment). We assume the cost of materials will be radically different based on the comparative values of the tools and materials needed to perform that labor. Let's say the paint and brushes and things cost $100, and the painter wants $15 an hour for his labor. 15×9=135. Therefore, the butchering of 18 chickens should be worth 135, so the cost of labor to butcher 1 chicken should be $7.50 + whatever the chicken cost to raise (a number derived from the inherited cost of raising them). Let's just pretend it's $5 (that's a guess based on my own fuzzy memory of the last time i actually calculated it 5 or 6 years ago). 

So, we can say that having your house painted costs $235 whereas buying a chicken for dinner costs $12.50. Those specific numbers might seem wrong to you personally in real life, and that's totally fine, all we really care about is the relationship. Compared to each other, this relationship seems completely agreeable: the commodities themselves represent reasonable proportions, the equivalence between disparate labors is fair. If all of a sudden that guy who paints houses wants $400, you'll reply "i'd have to charge $22 per chicken, GTFO of here with that nonsense!" 

Conversely, let's look at how the comparative value of painters works if the price stays the same. A painter who can do the same job in 7 hours will make more money in a year because they can do more gigs, a painter who takes 12 hours will earn much less. This isn't some nefarious scheme by the way, this is the chicken butcher's perception of value based on a days work. So long as the painter is charging $135 for the labor of painting the house, plus or minus an hour is fairly irrelevant. Now, if you're painting the house in 5 hours and therefore charging me $27 an hour, we might need to renegotiate before i call shenanigans with a shotgun, and if you're painting the house in 12 hours at a measly 11-something an hour, then maybe house painting is not a productive use of your time and energy. But notice, the time factor is its own penalty. You can get ahead within reason, and you can grind away if necessary, but either way my house gets painted, so i don't really have to care. 

You are intimately familiar with Marxist labor value if you have ever taken your car to a mechanic. It monetarily rewards the exceptional and punishes the lackadaisical, so long as they provide equivalent quality. 

For contrast to the labor theory of value, we look to the Austrian School theory of Marginal Utility. If labor is the mindset of production, utility is the mindset of consumption. Keep in mind this is not the same as referring to demand-side or supply-side economics. This is about the psychology of the participants, not the analysts.

The theory says that the value of a commodity is determined by its most trivial usage. As supply increases, people find new and creative ways to use that commodity, resulting in higher steady demand and lowering the overall cost of production. 

It's harder to give a good example, but we can look at corn. It is a labor intensive staple that requires processing to be viably nutritious, but at high levels of production we use it to make corn syrup, animal feed, ethanol, etc. Mining silicon is another example. We use silicon for all sorts of ingenious things from potholders to microchips. These commodities, then, get their value in terms of their most trivial usage, their marginal value, and when we zoom out to the macro level we can see that the result is a relatively stable commodity value over long periods of time. That phenomenon is the basis of sociopolitical systems like the "gold standard," and prioritizing investment over savings. 

What we need to understand is that both theories exist at the same time, both theories are in essence true for their own descriptive values, but both theories fail to describe real world phenomena when they collide. That is the conflict between the US and OPEC, two capitalists arguing about the nature of value. Oil producing countries want an equivalent exchange of labor value, American consumers want cheap gasoline at the expense of its producers. The end result is a lot of war because neither side agrees about what is or isn't fair. 

I think the source of this problem is the misinterpretation of the theories themselves as not simply descriptions of psychological states, but as ready-to-wear policy making decisions. They can't be. It is certainly true that people tend to respond to certain situations en masse, but no person is actually bound by any analytical construct. People tend to make what they think is the best choice for themselves, and that includes intentionally sabotaging their own goals and doing the opposite of what authority suggests. Any authority, a person, a book, conventional wisdom, mom and dad, etc. Policy has to equally address both sides of that coin.

So, to continue on from my previous explanation about the labor theory of value, we need to understand an important structural aspect of Marx's definition of Capitalism. Keep in mind that i'm not picking one side or the other to defend or bash, i'm simply describing the misconception. 

In my example i showed where surplus value is created by performing the same job in less time, or what we would colloquially call "working hard." Marx is primarly concerned with where that surplus goes and how it is used. 

Again with the caveats, but we have to use Marx's definition of Capitalism, not yours. If you call this structure something else, fine, but you are responsible for translating the terms for yourself. We are also using Bottle's reading of Marx, which is pointedly different from Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Bordiga, and on and on and on. If you haven't read my books or 3 years of facebook posts, you are at a bit of a disadvantage. I can't do anything about that except tell you to read my books (4th one coming out soon). 

What is this surplus thingamabob that capitalists exploit? It's the additional value created by doing the same job faster and/or more efficient than another person producing identical results. Pretend most people can produce 40 a day (of whatever it is). Dudelady can produce 60 of equal quality in the same amount of time, but if you try to make everyone else do 60 the quality of their output decreases. Dudelady is generating surplus value. If Dudelady cuts corners to accomplish it, that's cheating and Dudelady gets demerits or slapped with a wet noodle or something, but in this essay we'll say the situation is legitimate. 

Capitalism is any system where someone other than Dudelady owns that surplus as profit. Communism as Marx vaguely describes it (not the political parties or the Soviet Union like you're thinking about), is the absence of that structure, so it does not actually exist in the real world. Communism is the afterparty after we all watch Capitalism eat its own tail. 

Marxist Thought is a bunch of people trying to make the structure of Capitalism disappear, but Marx specifically says you can't make it disappear, you can only redistribute the surplus, and by the way the whole thing is stupid. That's Marx's assessment, and i happen to agree that for the most part the whole thing is stupid. That's my bias, and i'm sticking to it. 

Now, most people would say that Dudelady's surplus should rightfully be redistributed back to Dudelady. Trouble is, Dudelady sold that surplus during the agreement to be an employee. Yes, even if Dudelady is a sole proprietor, Dudelady is 2 different legal entities and must account for the actions of both of them; you cannot spend the same dollar twice, even though it looks like that on paper. That's not my definition, that's Capitalism, and no one has ever proven that it isn't. 

Now, some people will be tempted to argue that Marx's conception of Capitalism is wrong, but will almost inevitably use fundamental theories of Classical Economics to prove it. That's a problem because Marx's description of Capitalism is Classical Economics, so you end up rejecting your own argument. The inverse is also true, you might recognize it as the evolution from Structuralism to Post-Structuralism, or the Post-Modern Apocalypse. It's all the same extra-dimensional twist because economics is nothing more than a theoretical description of human behavior using counting. That's tough because we're bad at behaving and my goodness do we fight about it like Marx says we do. 

To be clear, my official opinion is that we need to stop using abstract economics as the decision making factor in our lives. It's a zero-sum game where both the winners and losers die having never received a trophy or a medal or even a "thanks for playing." It might be entertaining to watch on the weekend for some people, you might even make a career out of it, but i think you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who can honestly say it's fun. 

But back to compounding the problem. Marx advocates a Stateless global society, then quite confusingly seems to think that the State can be used to eliminate itself. We know that's not true, the state becomes a capitalist enterprise, and a lot of people end up selectively choosing who can or can't be a Capitalist. Same problematic twist there as well because you're arguing for taking away the private property of the people who you think are trying to take away your private property. 

Property is another one of those problematic terms, because as i outlined above, if you think you own what you produce you are by your own definition Marxist. Yet again, i didn't make those rules, i'm just climbing up/down the Escherian staircase so you can see what it looks like. 

As always, I both apologize and you're welcome?

Helmet - Aftertaste

Ok, ok, i can't end it that way, the aftertaste is terrible. Luckily, i heard Exactly What You Wanted and i haven't reviewed the 3rd Helmet album, Aftertaste. I'm certain me picking a fight with Erlewine is exactly what you wanted, so let's do it. 

He calls it bland, numbing, and a downright shame for such an intriguing 90s alternative metal band. His narrative is that they made the awesomeness that is Meantime, pushed too far to the experimental side with Betty, and failed to return to the grandeur of their original immediate and visceral hooky riffs and stuff. Disheartening. 

You know what Stephanie? Thom Yorke says it best, we hope that you choke. I guess if it helps you sleep at night, we'll pretend like we care. See, although the sonic onslaught is indeed loud and cacophonous, the harmonic language is insane to the point that it's actually impressive most of these songs have an identifiable, dare i say, demonstrable tonic considering whether he's driving somewhere slow or nowhere fast, United Arab Emirates still keep the gas in his car. Also, he'd rather be insulted by you than someone he respects, so that works. 

To be fair, i didn't like it that much for a long time either. It's a very acquired aftertaste. Like it or not, it's Post-Metal. I won't coma you with much of that, other than to say "post-" is kind of the catch-all term for using a type of music as a texture on top of which you do whatever thing you do. It's a bit like the floating head of David Bowie music i'm known for not being fond of. For this album, it's really just super noisy guitars playing extended harmonies over John Stanier's drumcophony while the bass does all sorts of weird stuff and Page sings little snippets of Alternative Pop songs. You really do have to put your brain back in 1997 mode because we're drowning out the madness with 10 times the madness. 

Long story short for a change, whereas Erlewine gives it the predictable D for disappointment, i give it an A for accuracy. 17 year old Bottle just nods his head and says "yep, that's exactly what it sounds like out there, glad my brain is melting inside this helmet." Interesting fact, it went out of print way back in 2006 of all places, so i better take extra special care of my OG CD copy. 

And that, as they say, well, that's all folks. Porky Pig-ed it out of the park. Look for new and excitingly different things from Bottle of Beef some time that is later than now. Skip's got some typos to wrangle, and Compy's got that appendicitis look in his eyes. Sandra of course took the liberty of already showing you the cover, so that cat's out of the box with the subatomic quantum thingy that might or might not have happened. Only one way to find out what's in the box, Mr. Pitt. Take a look, it's in a book, possibly one i've written, but you don't have to take my word for it. Space cadets, stand down. Que sera sriracha. Catch you on the flip side. Bottle out.

The End (at least until the next beginning)

Friends, Minions, Skeletons, please don't throw miscellaneous body parts at me. We stand upon the gateway of the future. Not a future we can predict in detail, but a future nonetheless. Where will we go? What will we do? That is not for me to decide, i simply keep meandering in a forwardish direction. But wherever you go, whatever you do, you can rest assured that me and my pals will be right here goofing off and finding new ways to amuse ourselves with the produce of your vegetable gardens.

Do not be sad, do not be afraid, every Bottle must face The Corkening. But you, my heartiest minions, you have your helmets, you have your shovels, you have each other. As i've said before, there are no goodbyes, only pulses in the stream of existence. So, now that we've seen how things are fermenting, it is time for me to put the proverbial cork in it. Any questions?

MEEP?

No, i already said that, i'm not going anywhere, i'm just shutting up because i ran out of things to talk about.

MEEP MEEP?

No, of course not. No exploding today, no exploding tomorrow, well unless you walk past the warning signs, or stick scissors in the socket, there i can't help you.

MEEP MEEP. MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP.

Are you new here?

MEEEP?

What a jackass. Oh, is my mic still on? Oh well, at least i honestly think you're a jackass. Don't worry, i'm a jackass too. It takes one to know one, you know?

Prelude to the epilogue of the ending of the Saga of Beef

B: alright, Skip. Towel time, giving up ghosts and stuff, how do we end this thing?

E: well, i mean, it's kind of the epilogue in its own right, right?

B: riiiiiiight, but how do i end it? Do i just Porky Pig the thing? A This Was Your Life montage? Pan out to "and so on...?" 

E: i don't know, they're your books.

B: good answer, good answer. Well, the first one had a structural ending at a full year. The second one ended at the beginning. The third one had that switcheroo where we realized it really is the same coin. There is no actual end, maybe Madam Eternity really does deserve a proper ellipsis.

E: sounds like you've decided.

B: i suppose i have. Don't actually publish it though?

E: i agree, save the ending for the book because it's not the end of the whole thing. We'll still be here, we've got no place else to go.

B: there's millions of unexplored hallways, but i see your point. It's merely the end of this particular chapter. Ok, i'll work on it all properly secret and we'll publish it as one final hurrah. 

E: works for me.

B: me too.

Welp, everybody, i've got some ends to tighten and a little bit more money to burn, but the Corkening appears to be nigh. It's been real and it's been fun, but it's also been real fun, so look for it in the place where i put that thing that time (yay, Hackers reference). This 4th and actually final book is nearing its completion. No clue what i'll do next, but i always seem to do something. Cheers.

Ideologies are bad, m'kay?

 I suppose we could revisit Zager and Evans, ideologies are bad, m'kay?

Why are they bad? Because they usually become lampoonishly infallible dogma that fallibly fails to accomplish anything except abject horribleness.

Does that mean your particular religion, your party, your ideals, your wants and needs? No, of course not. Unless it leads to killing people, then boo to that.

What's the deal with Ukraine? I guess Russia doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO? The invasion of Crimea back in 2014 was predicated on the dispute about who owns it. Is it part of Ukraine or is it part of Russia? The Russians who live there supposedly say Russia. The narrative has always been first-world America vs second-world Russia in an economic grudge match for the championship belt. That's dumb.

Before we all get confused, i'm not talking about human rights violations, war, shirtless horseback rides across the tundra, any of that stuff. I'm talking about the kind of "our sports team is better than yours and we'll light this car on fire to prove it" garbage blasted from all directions into our poor, fragile central nervous systems. 

We're dealing with second and third generation connotations here. "Welfare State" doesn't refer to food stamps and social security and unemployment insurance, those are merely three poorly constructed manifestations of a huge variety of possible systems that represent a government attempting to assist rather than dictate the lives of its citizens. 

I would argue that nation-states are simply Capitalism in is most extreme, belligerent form.  What differentiates a President from a King or a Despot? Certainly not the structure of hierarchical bureaucracy, that is their commonality. There is no structural difference between a constitution, a list of commandments, a book of proverbs; they are the structure of ideology itself. In themselves they represent not the path to a goal, but the conservation of privilege for their most devout evangelists.

Liberty and freedom, then, are not some state of being bestowed upon us by some benevolent being, but the result of our own refusal to infringe upon the liberty and freedom of others, to refuse to make choices in our own interest for a common good, to in fact reject the ideologies we most admire and desire. Liberty can only be given away, not seized or conserved. 

This is of course the radical Leftist in me talking, but an elected king is still a king, the cabinet and congress are still the king's court, the rival kings are still rivals in this game of thrones. A king who does nothing of consequence is absurd.

I am certainly not the first or only person to claim that Marxism is the worship of Marx as Christianity is the worship of Christ, nor am i the only person pointing out that America has never had a non-authoritarian President. How could it? 

The rude thing Biden said into a live microphone is no different than any other President, because the President is still merely a person. Rather than some supposed sign of hypocrisy, we must recognize it for what it really was: a window overlooking honesty built into a mansion of dishonesty. That honesty may not bear resemblance to your own, but the underlying/overdetermining dishonesty is not of the President's, or government's, or Constitution's making (the Russian Federation is now a Constitutional Republic, after all), it is instead the result of the collective psyche's refusal to accept the consequences of choice. I propose that that refusal of acceptance is in fact the pride of ideology itself. The winner must win, the slighted achieve justice, the good be rewarded, the bad be punished, immortality by any means necessary.

Our notion of Capitalism makes no such guarantee. In fact, it is predicated on the equality of failure. Not only must institutions fail no matter their size or intent, the more agreeable or popular their mission the more painful their failure must be. Those aren't my rules, this isn't my game, but they are the rules of the game nonetheless. The freest of laissez-faire black markets is the tyranny of the majority, it will make whatever choice it makes without hesitation and be replaced by another after it has reached saturation. 

The will of the people is not some magical teleological consensus, it is 3-million disparate voices screaming for a few moments of silence during the daily deluge of disastrophe. The rallying cry is, after all, give me liberty. The irony of course is that we confuse giving for taking, a fortune for fortune, freedom for the better of bad choices (which aren't really choices at all). 

There is immense sadness in the doing of good deeds, and that sadness arises from the recognition that for that brief moment in time that good deed is the exception, an abnormality. That brief moment of kindness, help, decency, call it what you will, that brief moment of trivial grace is an oasis in the desert of misery that forms the fabric of existence. That deep, unexpressable gratitude in the eyes of a fellow human breaks my heart, shatters my soul, and tells me there is so much more mountain to climb than i even imagined. 

These have been brain thoughts with Bottle. No  warranty expressed or implied. May cause dandruff. I have no idea why Polyvinyl records included this blue-raspberry flavored airheads with my Hum records, but i am definitely not complaining. Mysteries of life.

Warehouseman's Aria

 I've been secretly working on the libretto for the opera of my life. Here's what i've got for the warehouseman's aria (and yes the swearing is vital to character development):

(Recit.) ... sometimes people ask me what i do for a living. From this moment forward here's the answer i'll be giving....

Oh i

Pick shit up and i move it over there

Sometimes i use a forklift, sometimes i use the stairs.

Sometimes i just stand next to the dumpster and smoke, 'cause being an adult is a goddamned joke.

I pick shit up and i move it over there, sometimes i climb the shelving cause the product's way up there.

We may or may not have the thing you need today in stock, but if we do i'll pull it for you and i'll leave it on the dock.

I pick shit up and i move it over there. Sometimes i use a forklift, sometimes i use the stairs. 

Sometimes i just stand next to the dumpster and smoke, 'cause being an adult is a goddamned joke.

3rd half of story

 MEEP

Ahoy, there to you too.

Meep meep meep?

No, no, i'm always out of my depths. My flotation device might be a little worse for wear, but who knew Editors were so buoyant? Mind giving us a lift to the nearest island without a volcano?

Meep.

Thanks little dudes. We'll just tie this around his ankles like so and i'll climb up first. Heave ho and junk. No sense wasting good rum and algae water, he'll be fine, just leave him in that fish hammock. Mind if i take a nap?

Meep meep.

Excellent. Wake me up when we get somewhere...

But Bottle did not get anywhere. Instead he woke up with a terrible case of the Mondays, and an urge to hear something different....

2nd half of story

 E: oh, ok, i guess that makes sense.

B: does it? And more importantly, you're not even going to ask?

E: ask what?

B: you know, why they call them that.

E: call them what?

B: the "virgin islands."

E: i don't want to know.

B: horse hocky, you're just afraid to look naive and/or foolish.

E: ok, fine, why?

B: because Columbus was a tool.

E: what?

B: remember? Columbus thought Eurasia was it as far as Earth was concerned, so he logically believed he had already circumnavigated this newly round globe thingy, ergo everywhere he landed must have been India. Finders namers, so he decided to name these beautiful islands after St. Ursula and her 11 (or possibly 11,000 martyred Christian virgins, history is not good with numbers). That story, by the way, comes from a plaque on a building mentioning "Huns murdered Virgins here in Cologne a long time ago."

E: so basically none of that is even remotely helpful?

B: well, it is remote, but no not helpful. We're still lost at sea. Why don't you try floating and i'll see which direction you drift?

E: why don't you?

B: interesting fact, the lower half of my body is not bouyant. Never has been, never will be. Mystery of the universe, that one.

E: hhhhhhh, fine.

B: ok, good enough, follow me for about 11,000 stokes and we'll do it again. Keep an eye out for driftwood or turtles or something.

E: are we going to die?

B: eventually. Oh, you mean soon? Probably not. The trouble with washing up on a deserted island is that you can't actually do it until you're delirious and about to drown. I'm still disconcertingly chipper, so we got a while. If it makes you feel any better, you'll probably pass out first and i'll reach exhaustion trying to drag you along. If we're lucky we'll be sipping drinks from a pineapple in a day or two.

E: what if we're unlucky?

B: coconut water and a one-way trip up the volcano.

E: i wouldn't mind a few days stranded with meg ryan.

B: 1) i'm impressed, 2) i'm disturbed you actually know Joe Vs. The Volcano well enough to understand me, 3) grab that passing volleyball from that other Tom Hanks movie where a fedex plane crashes. He's not gonna like how his plot line turns out anyway; we're practically doing him a favor.