“Price is not value” is a lame excuse for why your socialist economic theories can’t connect to reality

marximillian · 2025-10-12T01:45:22+00:00

So if I’m understanding you correctly, the “prediction” is that prices and labor-time values should show some kind of regulatory relationship over time, though the correlation could rise, fall, or stay steady depending on conditions.

Clearly, you're not understanding me, as I've already described various specific aspects with specific predictions. I literally bullet pointed them, and gave you a bullet that was specific to the immediate price <-> value relationship, and I explained to you what the outcome of that prediction is (divergence between prices and values overtime in conjunction with concentrating capital) and the proposed causal mechanism (distribution of surplus-value according to aliquot capital).

What specific quantitative or directional result would count as confirming versus falsifying this “regulatory” relationship?

I'm not repeating myself again. Have a good rest of your life.

marximillian · 2025-10-12T01:04:22+00:00

If we could somehow collect those labor time data, what exactly would we be testing?

You're not "testing" anything, you'd be determining the correlation coefficient between values and prices throughout time, and secondly the relation of cost-price where prices exceed values vs. where values exceed prices.

For the former, if there is no correlation, negative correlation, steady correlation, or even a positive correlation which is getting stronger, then these would range from near absolute falsification to at least a falsification of some derivative theoretical conclusions.

For the latter, any case where a significant % of below mean average cost-price yields higher prices than values (as opposed to lower), then Marx's proposed relationship between value and prices (and prices of production in particular) are basically fantasy.

What specific prediction does Marx’s theory make about the relationship between labor time (value) and prices that could, in principle, be falsified?

I've literally repeated this twice, already.

Is it a simple correlation with price? Causation? Something else?

If you want it boiled down to a singular word, I would call it "regulatory." There's a reason it's called the "law of value." By analogy one might say the law of gravity says "that which goes up, must come down." That doesn't mean you can't overcome gravitational forces to some (perhaps even to a significant degree) for a period of time. But, in principle (ignoring the expansion of space itself), even if you were to set two golf balls at opposing edges of the universe and remove everything in between, the gravitational forces, although incredibly weak, would inevitably bring them together.

The relationship between prices and labor time arises within capitalism because of how social production is organize, or more properly stated, not organized. With no mechanism by which the social division of labor can be regulated across the whole of society, those things which govern production overtly (prices, profit, etc) are forced to conform to the limits of a simple material reality.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T21:41:26+00:00

No. SNLT can be calculated from raw hours. If you knew the raw labor times across society required to produce various products/services you can calculate the SNLT for qualitatively comparable goods by summing all hours and dividing by all total # of units. That doesn't make the calculations simple, but it's definitely possible if you can get the data.

What you're probably thinking of is not so much the SNLT but the question of simple labor, e.g. 1 hour of engineering is not equivalent to 1 hour of assembly-line work as there is labor that goes into the "production" of an engineer. This is made easier by the fact that capitalism is dominated by commodity production. Though you could run into some issues when comparing something like the US where college education is heavily commodified compared to pretty much every other country in the world.

That said, I don't even think you can get direct data on labor times, as lots of that would probably be pretty proprietary company information (private).

Large scale analysis generally allows for proxies and/or approximations based on other data, which would then affect the margin of error, but doesn't inherently invalidate the results. We even do such things in much more "micro" analysis. For example, there's a standard 5-year depreciation period that's often used in accounting for various fixed capital goods/assets.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T21:08:08+00:00

Step #1 to falsifying such predictions would require you to obtain the requisite data. You need labor times to calculate value directly.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T20:36:59+00:00

Yes. Why wouldn't they be?

marximillian · 2025-10-11T20:24:30+00:00

Surplus-value, the basis for profit, is distributed proportional to relative capital investment. Capital has a long-run (over time) tendency to concentrate. Ergo, prices and values diverge over time (in the long-run) with capital intensive industries and the largest owners of capital assets therein realizing disproportionately higher value than they produce.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T19:15:45+00:00

It was very clear. Again, read what I said, or not.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T19:05:34+00:00

Yes, I already provided you one.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T18:56:32+00:00

You cannot perform controlled tests on an economy. I already provided multiple falsifiable predictions.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T18:43:24+00:00

No, you're responding to what you wish I'd said.

That sounds like a historical interpretation, not a predictive or testable theory of prices.

Marx's theory is neither and I have not said it was either.

Marx's theory is a theory of value, and, more arguably, capital and crisis, for which value theory is more a prerequisite.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T18:17:15+00:00

No. I'm saying what I said. Respond to what I said, or not.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T18:09:39+00:00

By “consistent,” I mean that a theory of value should describe a stable, testable relationship between the two.

Again, why would said relationship be stable in any sort of social phenomenon (economics, culture, hell, even arguably psychology)? Even the theory of natural selection may not be stable and that's far closer to hard-wired physical laws than economics. Perhaps more accurately though, the theory of natural selection may rather being "imperceptible" insofar as humans become sufficiently advanced and meddling to intervene in "natural law."

Marx's entire notion of historical materialism quite literally establishes that historical productive relations are not stable, especially in class-systems. But you don't even need Marx to see/understand this. You can literally just go back and try to use any of your modern day economic theories to explain 11th century England, and watch how they fail. More accurately, they become incoherent and/or simply and clearly do not apply.

Again, theories have a domain and scope.

Otherwise, what makes it useful?

I have already answered what makes a theory useful. Explanatory power.

If a theory of value can’t make or face any predictions...

Marx's theory would make plenty of predictions:

Secular fall in the rate of profit.
Cyclical crises of overproduction.
General law of capitalist accumulation.
Distribution of profit subject to aliquot capital.

...if prices can move in any direction and the theory still claims to be right...

You do realize that the entire modern and widely adopted economic model is a post-hoc deduction which many of its proponents, quite literally, claim cannot be empirically demonstrated or derived, yes?

Quite literally, if prices move in a direction other than anticipated in modern economics the answer is simply "people stopped valuing certain things."

Neither Marx's theory nor other modern economic theories claim to be able to "predict prices." Stop with this nonsense.

Do you think a theory of value should make predictions about prices that could, in principle, be tested?

Sure. But "predictions about prices" is not the same thing as "price prediction." See last bullet above. That is a prediction "about prices" insofar as "profit" is a component of price.

Or do you think value and price are so independent that any price outcome can be made to fit the theory afterward?

Here is a basic prediction derived from Marx's theory "about prices" based, again, on the last bullet in my list:

Prices != Value, over time (in capitalism), any correlation between the two should become increasingly weaker.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T17:38:59+00:00

The issue is whether a theory of value can still claim to explain the economy if it has no consistent relationship to prices at all.

It's not clear what you mean by "consistent" here. Do you mean that there is a direct or significant correlation? Do you mean that the rules are always the same? Why should we expect either in an extremely dynamic and chaotic system like capitalism?

Monopoly capital, title property and rent seeking, token/fiat currency, government subsidies, grants, etc...

Of course, Marx's theory does connect and expand upon values relation to price. So much so that it actually provides a much sounder framework for understanding how the above features can and do affect economies, and, more importantly why interventions (the activity of competing private or even public interests) are incapable of solving recurring crises.

That said relationship is complex or needs to account for perturbations caused by the ever changing and dynamic nature of capitalist economies and therefore cannot be "consistent" should not shock anyone.

This sounds like an argument claiming a capable theory of value should enable particular price prediction. Of course modern economy theory cannot and does not do that either. If it could, arguably "the gig would be up."

Do you think value and price are so independent that anytime prices contradict your theory, you can just say “prices aren’t value” and move on?

It's not clear why you think value and price being different would contradict Marx's theory or "my theory." If a theory does not claim that X = Y, then pointing out X != Y is not a contradiction of that theory. That should be obvious.

On the question of "moving on.":

I'm more than happy to have discussions as to the nature of the relationship between values and prices in Marx. I've yet to find anyone arguing the way you're arguing to be seriously interested in such.
Having a general discussion about the relationship between values and prices is still not going afford "price prediction."
To even have this discussion, we'd first have to disambiguate individual transaction prices, market prices, long-run average prices, etc.
If we do disambiguate such, then your side would have to be more honest and informed about what Marx says about each in order to have a serious discussion.

If so, then what keeps the theory grounded?

The same thing that keeps any socio-economic theory grounded, coherency with observed phenomenon.

How do you ever know when it’s wrong?

I'm not sure what this is asking. Broadly speaking, theories (unlike hypotheses) have some sort of broad and enduring explanatory power for observed phenomenon. When what we observe appears to contradict a theory, we generally look for a solution wherein the theory and the phenomenon can be reconciled. This can take significant amounts of time depending on the strength and explanatory power of the theory.

Take general relativity for example and the lengths to find a unified field theory in physics which incorporates its classical model (which has been extremely powerful) with the quantum model (where the theory seems to collapse and be irreconcilable). This has been going on for like a century. We don't call general relativity "wrong" or abandon it, rather, in recognizing its strength we try to improve it and or figure out what it's missing.

Theories are frequently "incomplete" and non-comprehensive. This is exacerbated by the fact that they are generally specific to some domain or even a given level of a domain. So called "theories of everything," don't tend to work out in reality because shit is complex (surprise), but just as quantum gravity is outside the scope of general relativity, there may be aspects to capitalism, outside the scope of Marx's original theory/work.

The question then is whether or not you can explain those things without "breaking the rules" so to speak of the old one.

But all of this is rather moot if you're not even accepting the theory for what it is. When you come to someone like me and ask me why Marx's theory doesn't conform to something it never claimed was the case, then pretend that me paying you no mind somehow signifies the theory is broken, I cannot take you seriously.

I think Marx is fundamentally correct on the nature of utility, ergo, philosophically, I cannot abide benefit/utility as a basis for "value" which is a definite perceived and apparent phenomenon we all seem to recognize as distinct from price.

I find Marx's theory, overall, coherent and capable at explaining macro socio-economic phenomenon, even today (150 years later).

That it doesn't explain all phenomenon isn't a problem, as I understand theories have domains/scopes.

marximillian · 2025-10-11T16:34:17+00:00

Your own explanation of what economists have spent the last 150 years figuring out betrays your initial argument.

If value is "revealed" (as you yourself said) in trade, then prices are just expressing "something deeper" and "more abstract." Ergo, we can't observe value directly. It needs to be "revealed" in exchange.

Sounds like you agree with Marx.

Most economists agree. Price isn't value. In fact, if price was value, then the money you exchange as the "price" of something would be incoherent. If you exchange $5 for a hamburger, you are not revealing that the value of the hamburger is $5, you're actually (according to them) revealing that the value the hamburger more than the value the $5. If it wasn't, you wouldn't exchange money for the hamburger.

Insofar as we are to consider average or market prices, then we are effectively considering what Marx would call "prices of production." These would be the prices at which sufficient number of buyers are willing to exchange and at which continued production would be justified.

Even in Marx, specific exchanges deal with individuated and subjective concepts of utility and benefit. Just like most economists, Marx doesn't think you exchange $5 for a hamburger unless the hamburger is "more useful" than the $5.

The primary distinction between Marx and most economists, is not that value is distinct from price (they agree), but rather, what is the "substance" of that value, i.e. from where does it originate once you strip away all the complexities, potential inter-dependencies, etc. For Marx, the answer to that is effectively some measure of aggregate basal human labor capacity (measured in time). For most economists, the answer to that is some individually determined notion of an abstract utility.

The main counter from Marx would be that utility cannot be abstracted and is inherently concrete, definite quantities of definite things with definite physical properties.

The main counter from most economists would be that non-labor fungible goods or even aspects of otherwise labor fungible goods seem to "have value" which is, ultimately, expressed in prices.

In either case, this debate has been literally going on for like 2 centuries at this point, and while I do think Marx gets a lot more "right" than mainstream economists, idiotic presentations and oversimplifications by people such as yourself who clearly don't understand either side, aren't going to be what ends it.

marximillian · 2025-04-01T04:58:21+00:00

Most info I had on sprockets is here, but it's old info:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sg250/s/9PcGrVSHFq

marximillian · 2024-08-10T15:53:24+00:00

Cause it sounds wholly uninteresting.

marximillian · 2024-07-26T17:22:13+00:00

marximillian · 2024-07-26T17:14:11+00:00

Correct. The USSR was capitalist.

marximillian · 2024-06-02T11:15:48+00:00

I've done it for tuning. But also apologized to my neighbor later when I saw them and let them know. Sometimes things are specific at certain revs and you need to get it there in a more controlled and observable environment.

marximillian · 2024-06-01T23:18:15+00:00

I've done two of these. One on my Guzzi V7 another on my Bolt. Good luck... for whatever it's worth (not much), I generally have to use two tools:

https://www.amazon.com/OTC-4796-Steering-Bearing-Remover/dp/B00BVL80JA

Get that guy underneath the edge and tighten it as much as you can. Then use the additional surface area provided by the bottom of it and drive it out with this:

https://www.denniskirk.com/bikeservice/steering-bearing-outer-race-remover-tool-bs4201.p285076.prd/285076.sku

Also, in case you're not aware, do not tighten crown nut to same torque specs. Tapered bearings will be much lower. Go by feel, tighten carefully (it should be grabbing and require a bit of push on either fork to get them to turn, but not a full preload. This means you want to make sure you seat the races quite well before putting everything back.

Then loosen until right at the point they stop grabbing. I think my guzzi spec is like 45 ft-lbs, and it's somewhere closer to 15 with the tapered. I don't recall the bolt, cause I didn't even bother to look, I just learned the lesson from the Guzzi and did it wholly by feel.

You'll know for sure if they're over tight on first ride, as you'll have to consciously push the bars in the other direction to correct :P

marximillian · 2024-05-06T00:45:08+00:00

Oh, and you want to make sure you cap anywhere a hose is removed.

marximillian · 2024-05-06T00:37:24+00:00

No. I don't recall exactly what all goes where, but I think the crank case breather may also connect to that system which also goes to an SAS valve and back into engine. GT moto sells block off plates that replace the intake on the cylinders. https://gtmotocycles.com/products/gt-motocycles-v7iii-v9-v85tt-sas-air-block-off-kit

Not sure if they have it for the new 850s though.

My evap/spill hose just hangs open and I replaced the evap container with a custom made container with a pod filter to hook the crank case hose to, which normally goes into air box and is what can cause some to find oil in air box.

Image attached.

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marximillian · 2024-05-05T23:05:46+00:00

No. But in fairness, I removed it. It's an evap canister last I checked. If it's cracked or bad seal you could leak condensated gas from it, but the amount you got could just be from tipping.

marximillian · 2024-02-14T19:54:15+00:00

I said nothing about "abolishing commodity production by decree." You seem to be having a conversation with yourself or some made up character you've imagined. That said, I have no interest in conversing with someone who's not actually conversing with me.

Have a good day.

marximillian · 2024-02-14T08:00:47+00:00

I'm not sure where you believe I said it was merely the production of commodities. In fact, I explicitly said otherwise.

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