this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
1154 points (98.2% liked)

Memes

51785 readers
1336 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works -2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

preventing people from being able to take large (few tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars) risks in hopes of refinulous profit (trillions in profits from not needing as many workers)

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Risk has no bearing on value. Technological progression lowers the necessary working time to replace the means of subsistence for workers, which wages are regulated towards, meaning a greater ratio of the working day can be used on surplus value extraction. Ie, if machine A can create 100 widgets per hour per worker, and a worker needs 300 widgets per day worth of value to survive, then the working day of 8 hours has 5 hours surplus labor. If machine B ups that to 300 widgets per hour, then that becomes 1 hour of necessary labor and 7 surplus, increasing profit. Risk has no bearing, nor utility.

All of this can be handled publicly, without a need for profit.

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works -3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

risk is economically relevant, a 10% chance of $100 dollars or a 100% chance of $10 do not have the same use-value to everyone. Why not instead just force companies to pay asymptoticly more taxes for profit?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Nothing needs to have the same use-value across all of society. What's important is that use-values are produced, and sold for their exchange-value on average. There's no reason to retain the profit motive or capitalism in general as a system. You should read the article I linked. Risk creates no value.

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works -4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I never said risk creates value, I mentioned that removal of risk creates value. profit is the only way I'm aware of that let's me amass a horde of anything of value as such any system that doesn't allow profit is a failure.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Removal of risk facilitates the creation of value, but isn't value itself. If, for example, it takes 100 dollars of constant capital and 20 dollars of variable to produce 100 widgets, with 10 dollars worth of raw materials being expected waste, reducing that to 0 results in 90 constant and 20 variable, which isn't creation of value itself but an improvement in the productivity of capital.

Profit through capitalist production, ie exploitation of labor, is stolen value. You can work to improve your material conditions in systems that aren't driven by profit, selling your labor-power is how the vast majority of people pay for their subsistence, but this isn't "profit," but wages.

Again, read the article.