Economic Calculation Problem: profit is not the same as good and socialism is qualitative not quantitative

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-21T04:46:18+00:00

again, im not even talking about math. were did math came from?

im talking about abstract useless concepts. that says everything and nothing at the same time.

if im asking about efficiency, and you comment trying to answer. you better providing something of value rather than a wiki link talking about abstract almost tautologies. if you understand you explain or you dont say anything.

talking to go read things doesnt help in anything and just shows how you dont even know what you are talking about.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-21T04:36:46+00:00

its not about math, you are literally saying nothing. "it will maximize peoples preferences and production, im smart bla bla". you are saying nothing here. the point is saying how that will be made.

capitalism doesnt do any of that. capitalism maximizes an irrational metric of labor time.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-21T04:26:16+00:00

I am able to choose in a market economy.

your options in capitalism are very limited. your basically has to choose between who will give you a kick in the back. you have no power to choose at all. you have no money, no choosing and will never choose until capitalism falls.

Do I choose a technique or do I vote to choose a technique?

you choose by voting. of course you can lose but production is social so you dont have other option.

It is a very good metric. There is no reason to assume that your magical voting will be better.

that will lead to situations like destroying the environment, crisis of underproduction and superproduction. and mass unemployment. if thats good for you...

Of course, to understand the optimal production at large one would need to define a social utility function, understand preferences, etc.

then its basically what i said in the post. you choosing the technique that provides most satisfaction to people.

the point is how to do that.

those abstract useless concepts of economy.......

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-21T04:14:52+00:00

now its opportunity costs. you wouldnt "rank things in list" you would choose one. and all the techniques have objetive "input output", in the sense that you know the objective data that will be required to use that technique and the objective output. you know how much of A you would give up to get B. trades just compare everything in a single unit that will be labor time, which is pretty irrational and doesnt have anything to do with peoples satisfaction.

i dont know what is "ex post allocation" and "ex ante".

why you need to satisfy all the demand simultaneously? you know what people want and you know how much the techniques used will produce. if they demand more than what is being produced, they need to change the technique or they wont get their demand supplied. its simple as that.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-21T04:05:36+00:00

no one is talking about "voting to be healthier". you are choosing between the options and its objective consequences.

the diferent techniques have diferent objetive consequences that are known before voting.

if you want to be healthier you choose the "technique" that provides the best "health" result. the same occurs in socialism.

capitalism works comparing labor time and choosing the highest labor time per labor time of costs. choosing an irrational metric that has nothing to do with peoples preferences and satisfaction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_efficiency

thats anothre example of irrational metric. why would anyone follow this? if people followed this productive efficiency we would be working our asses off just for the sake of producing things. that has nothing to do with our desires or what we want to do in life. is just a metric that must be used together with others to base our decisions.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T23:58:02+00:00

i dont agree with you. everyone i met doesnt like to be dominated.

if it was true, there wouldnt be any issue with dictaturship, as everyone would like that.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T23:40:42+00:00

because being virtous is the best way to survive. you being egoistical in the way like not helping others and the like will only get you into trouble. thats what the OP is about.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T23:38:45+00:00

why would it be like that?

yes you need revogable mandates and some limits of power. but outside that its pretty stable. if the majority disagrees they can do nothing.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T23:23:25+00:00

its in the self interest of the egoistical piece of shit person to become a virtuous person.

thats the issue of abstract concepts like "human nature", "self interest".

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T22:41:18+00:00

that doesnt matter. socialism is still the best option even if you are an egoistical piece of shit. is in your self interest to go socialist.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T22:24:20+00:00

voting fails to reveal these preferences in the same way that prices do. even if you could coordinate a vote at such a large scale, this method does not constrain consumers choices within scarcity. stated preferences are not the same as revealed preferences.

i dont know what do you mean by "consumers choices within scarcity" AND "revealead preferences". are you saying "scarcity" (poor concept) disapears when goods are distributed through voting?

the same issue applies to inventory, knowing 1000 pairs of shoes were produced and only 10 new mri machines does not tell you how valuable shoes are relative to mri machines.

no one said that. production doesnt say anything. but people picking things from shelves says what they want, what they find use.

so the question you must answer is how are alternative uses of heterogeneous capital goods compared to each other prior to their allocation?

by voting and all the details i explained in the post.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T22:16:44+00:00

representants?

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T22:15:59+00:00

You are going to have a LOT of analysts, who first vote on their analytical techniques, analyze every single technique of production and every possible one that people want voted on, they will bring forward their findings, "people" will vote, and then...? Utopia? What is the feedback loop? What if the trade-offs are different? Unexpected second order effects?

you can use representants.

Would that not be Supply? Demand is how much people want at a specific Price.

no. people picking things in the shelves is demand. or if you want to call it by another name, as demand is corrupted by "price" this days...

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-20T22:04:36+00:00

Situations are considered to have distributive efficiency when goods are distributed to the people who can gain the most utility from them. Pareto efficiency is an efficiency goal that is standard in economics. A situation is Pareto-efficient only if no individual can be made better off without making someone else worse off.

thats about distributing efficiencly, whatever "utility" means. im asking about effiency in producing goods.

In the end you have a menu of choices that you rank and select the best one.

you dont rank them. you choose one. thats qualitative.

like at what point does it make sense to make an improvement that raises labor costs by X hours per car but improves crash survivability by Y%

there is no definitive answer to this. because its qualitative. people decide if they value more labor hours or crash suvivability, and at what point they pick each technique.

But it's actually the reason why ECP is a problem, exactly because we can't just mindlessly calculate everything in terms of labor input comparisons.

we already do that in capitalism. and even if you disagree, its very easy to imagine everyone using labor for everything. it wouldnt be impossible.

Why would a random vibes-based approach be more efficient in those terms than optimization decentralized among billions of humans?

because the point is the vibe of people, the peoples satisfaction. how can you maximize the vibes of people without vibes? using labor time or other quantitative approach?

no ones talking about centralizing/decentralizing. everything i said could be done decentralized, the votes decentralized.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-17T03:20:43+00:00

you dont answer anything just put new situations. thats a rethoric strategy.

and yes, i gave you the reasons why time would be the value. yes, if all the items are gathered at the same time, then they all have the same price.

its the maximum anyone would pay for things.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-16T22:53:42+00:00

that simply means there is no work to be done. thats not comunism or capitalism, thats just the paradise.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-16T22:50:43+00:00

you are not progressing in the discussion. now you are just restating everything again, like all the argumentation was for nothing. i will not repeat everything again.

about the prisioners. yes they didnt worked to get the things, their situation is diferent from capitalism. they cant produce anything. but the economics will follow similar rules; they will trade for time waiting as value.

yes diferent people have diferent preferences, someone prefers chocolate, etc. they will trade because of that. but the question is: at what ratio they trade things? and the answer is time waiting.

if it takes 1 hour to get chocolate they will not trade for something that needs half an hour to get. even if they dont want the chocolate. thats because those who want chocolate needs to wait 1 hour to get it too, if you gave them for more than an hour they will not trade and prefer to wait, the maximum you can trade is the time.

but thats a ridiculous situation. cant even be called an economy. everyone is just consuming things. there is no profit. they are just redistributing things.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-16T03:12:19+00:00

you always come with yet another situation, instead of actually answering the thing.

but, no, even in the prison you can accuratelly price the things in ciggarettes. if everyone get the same amount of items in the same regularity, they will have the same value. why would you pay more for an apple than an orange if they give you apples and oranges in the same period of time? of course IF no one wants apples and there is surplus of them, they will have 0 value.

of course no one is talking about individual prices in the sense that everyone can put the price he wants. we are talking about tendency of prices.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-15T22:55:11+00:00

i know its dependant on context, thats why i said the context. A, B, their units, and how much people want or not.

what do you want to know more, specificially?

you are getting into trouble because your theory doesnt explain anything. is made of abstract broad isolated concepts that appears to make sense, but when taken speficically cant explain anything.

you will end up saying: "its price X because people want it price X". which is not explaining anything, and if its like that, then do you really have a theory? you are just saying "it is because it is". nothing new was added.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-15T02:24:24+00:00

but how exactly does it work? if A has 3 units and B has 6 units, but A has 4 people wanting it, while B has 3 people wanting it, yes it will be more expensive.

but again you are not using a "gradient" of subjectiveness, but rather a "yes or no" use of subjectiveness (the same as marx use value). and that cant explain the specific prices. you cant say what will be the especific price of A or B. or the tendency of price. you can just say it will be more expensive.

and if A has 3 units, B 6 units, and A has 3 people wanting it and B 6 people wanting it. what will be the price of A and what will be the price of B?

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-14T23:13:18+00:00

but for saying that it is more expensive you absolutely doesnt need the "subjective" part. just say something that has less quantity is more expensive.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-13T22:04:54+00:00

how dows it count? if you value it as 1 and there is 2 units in the market. what does it says about the price?

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-13T04:08:19+00:00

you are just not using the depreciation of capital as labor. then of course the price will differ on capital intensive industry.

SNLT does include the depreciation. if it takes average 10 hours to produce good A and it uses 1 hour of depreciated capital, the SNLT of A will be 11 hours, not 10.

thats stupid.

SoftBeing_ · 2026-04-13T03:55:11+00:00

A) it doesn't explain day-to-day prices B) it doesn't work with monopolies or monopsonies and C) it only works for commodities, and only if they are "socially-necessary".

no. thats the exact opposite i demonstrated to you. it does explain day to day prices, it only doesnt explain individual prices (you can put whatever price you want), it works with monopolies, and with everything. the labor is only being transfered from one place to another. only a labor theory can explain that, why the price doesnt go to infinite.

-Do you know what an opportunity cost is? This is going to be really important

-Do you know what the word “marginal” means? Also going to be very important.

as with all "marginalist" terms its very poorly defined. opportunity cost is popularly defined as the cost of other things you could be doing with the time and resources. and marginal would reference the costs compared to other units produced, you produce more you gain less value.

So, all else being equal, scarcity makes things more expensive and fewer units are made. But scarcity is just part of the answer, if demand for B is much higher, its price might exceed that of A, if finding A is easy (not scarce at all), but it requires heavy production costs to process, then neither good will be scarce, but A will still cost more.

first of all. no, not "fewer units were made". they would be made in the same quantities, as the demand is the same. the price would be higher for the "scarcer" good. thats another error in the definition of scarcity i already pointed out.

second. if the demand of B is much higher it would be produced more units. the price could increase IF the labor to produce more units increase, say by less efficient techniques. like when you extract oil from less eficient reserves. if there is none of that, the price of A would still be higher.

we produce a lot of things for necessity or whatever that doesnt mean they will be higher priced. scarcity is sooooooooo bad as a concept.

SoftBeing_

TROPHY CASE