the infamous “mud pie” argument conservatives like to bandy about pretending it proves Marx and LVT wrong
The bigger problem with this argument is that the premise is nonsensical. It assumes that mud pies are obviously worthless and that people would actually spend time manufacturing them. You can make exactly the same argument against the subjective theory of value: "hey, imagine if people started buying mud pies for a million dollars each, then the subjective theory of value would imply that they are actually worth a million dollars, which is obviously ridiculous". Clearly there is no theory of value that can make sense out of a hypothetical situation in which people place great value on something that is universally agreed to be worthless.
In my experience neoliberal economics is full of these incredibly lazy arguments that attempt to dismiss the basic foundations of any alternative points of view so that they don't have to actually think about them (the "economic calculation problem" argument against planned economies is another very silly one). It's very weird how the field of economics became so narrow-minded despite there being so little empirical support for many of its accepted theories. Pretty much every other field seems to be more open-minded, even ones like climate science that constantly have to deal with cranks and well-funded campaigns to discredit them.
The bigger problem with this argument is that the premise is nonsensical. It assumes that mud pies are obviously worthless and that people would actually spend time manufacturing them. You can make exactly the same argument against the subjective theory of value: "hey, imagine if people started buying mud pies for a million dollars each, then the subjective theory of value would imply that they are actually worth a million dollars, which is obviously ridiculous". Clearly there is no theory of value that can make sense out of a hypothetical situation in which people place great value on something that is universally agreed to be worthless.
In my experience neoliberal economics is full of these incredibly lazy arguments that attempt to dismiss the basic foundations of any alternative points of view so that they don't have to actually think about them (the "economic calculation problem" argument against planned economies is another very silly one). It's very weird how the field of economics became so narrow-minded despite there being so little empirical support for many of its accepted theories. Pretty much every other field seems to be more open-minded, even ones like climate science that constantly have to deal with cranks and well-funded campaigns to discredit them.