America Is Running Out of Everything The global supply chain is slowing down at the very moment when Americans are demanding that it go into overdrive. By Derek Thompson

  • LeninWeave [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Edited preface: in writing my simplified explanation, I did butcher this a bit. As SadStruggle92 points out below, what's meant by "labor" here is the average labor necessary to produce a given commodity, not the labor of a specific worker. It's the socially-necessary labor-time, the actual basis for the Labor Theory of Value.

    IE someone taking three times as long to make something as the average worker adds the same amount of value, rather than three times as much - which, incidentally, is a gotcha a lot of liberals who've never read Marx think they've found in the LTV. The below is only meant as a quick explanation, please read Capital if you really want all the detail.

    It's as @Alaskaball said, to decrease costs companies automate more. This means less labor. Since labor is the only thing that can really actually create value, less labor necessary means less value added means less profit.

    For example, if a worker makes widgets and produces $100 an hour of value, he might only be paid $20. This is $80 of profit for the owner of the factory. Let's assume that the whole industry is like this, at a kind of cost-profit equilibrium.

    Now, there's a technological innovation and that worker is replaced by a machine that only costs $10 per hour to run. For a short amount of time, the owner will make more, but as that automation spreads around to competitors he'll be forced to decrease the sale price to compete, until he can no longer decrease it further (i.e. tends towards no profit, only covering costs of machine).

    Or, in other words, machines can only impart the value they hold (investment to buy and maintain them) into products, since they do no labor. Workers alone can produce added value. Honestly, I feel like I'm kind of butchering it, but Capital covers it pretty well IIRC.

      • LeninWeave [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        All possible responses, yeah. Marx also had a list of things that help (temporarily) raise the rate of profit, which I'm going to copy from Wikipedia.

        • More intense exploitation of labor (raising the rate of exploitation of workers).
        • Reduction of wages below the value of labor power (the immiseration thesis).
        • Cheapening the elements of constant capital by various means.
        • The growth of a relative surplus population (the reserve army of labor) which remained unemployed.
        • Foreign trade reducing the cost of industrial inputs and consumer goods.
        • The increase in the use of share capital by joint-stock companies, which devolves part of the costs of using capital in production on others.

        There's an economist (several, I think, but one that I know of off the top of my head) who's sort of made demonstrating the TRPF hypothesis his life's work. He's got a blog at thenextrecession.wordpress.com if you're interested in seeing modern, real-world data related to this.

        • Atavist [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Thanks for the explanation and that blog. I'll check it out.

          But something's got to give at some point right, where it reaches a breaking point?

          • LeninWeave [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            But something’s got to give at some point right, where it reaches a breaking point?

            Yeah, and there's ways it can be mitigated. That blog has some sort-of-case-studies about it. But the idea of the TRPF hypothesis is that it's eventually not reconcilable and the economy will destroy itself. For example, imagine an economy where no one worked and everything was fully automated. How would it be possible to profit?

              • LeninWeave [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                I always hesitate to use "inevitable" because it feels like counting chickens before they've hatched. For example, society could destroy itself in a climate apocalypse. :agony-mescaline:

                But, like, eventually? Yeah, things should tend towards it.

                • CrimsonSage [any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Also you could end up like last time and have a giant global war over shares of profit. Thereby destroying a ton of aggregate capital and reseting accumulation.

                • Atavist [none/use name]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Damn theres that too. Insha Allah Xi pushes the button before that happens

        • bottech [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          The growth of a relative surplus population (the reserve army of labor) which remained unemployed.

          Isnt it equavilent to the more intense exploitation since it does it by facilitating the more intense exploitation? If so why include it as a separate point?

          Also another way to increase the rate of profit is establishment of monopolies

    • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Can't all the capitalists just form a cartel and not actually lower prices and compete with each other?

      It's like how they can probably make lightbulbs that last way longer but everyone decided not to. Dubai specially ordered longer lasting ones that can only be sold there.

      • s0ykaf [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It’s like how they can probably make lightbulbs that last way longer but everyone decided not to.

        i don't think that's how it really happens, it's just that you as a consumer can't really see too far beyond the price tag, that would require perfect information that you don't really have (except in extreme cases)

        programmed obsolescence is not exactly a conscious choice by all capitalists, it's just an expression of how shit the price system becomes after a certain level of productivity - living in a reality of scarcity, you tend to buy whatever is cheaper because you don't really know how much longer a more expensive choice would last, which makes those products more competitive, which, in turn, forces capitalists to make that choice

        it's a downward spiral of waste and overconsumption that everyone is basically forced into just because of how capitalism works

        • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          No, the lightbulb thing is definitely real, LED lightbulbs should last forever if they're actually ran to spec.

          They design the lightbulbs to overheat the LEDs because they send too much power through them and they die. An LED lightbulb should not be hot to touch but they all are because they don't really care.

          This is about the Dubai bulbs, and even veritasium did a video on it

          The lightbulb conspiracy is the only one I actually believe in capitalists getting in a room to form a cartel for. That and telecom companies in Canada.

      • LeninWeave [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        You're right. I'm familiar with the concept of socially-necessary labor-time, but I was trying to do an ELI5 and unfortunately butchered it a bit in the process. I simply meant that labor has to be necessary to add value.

        The point being that, if everything is completely automated everywhere, socially-necessary labor-time to produce anything is zero. No labor to be done, no surplus value to be extracted, no profit.

        Gonna edit my post to point out it's the average necessary labor that counts, thanks for pointing it out.