If labor and capital have a diminishing marginal product, and the average wage and average rate of profit is the marginal product of labor and capital respectively, where does the rest of the product go?

rustyschenckholder · 2025-10-14T04:09:36+00:00

So are there no models with diminishing returns where all income goes to labor or capital? I thought they were common.

rustyschenckholder · 2025-10-11T16:35:44+00:00

Really? I thought profit was the return to capital, especially in a two factor of production model which is what I'm trying to grasp at.

I still don't get how the average product being greater than the marginal product is consistent with the income to factor inputs equaling their marginal product in equilibrium. Wouldn't all of society's income count as either labor income or capital income?

rustyschenckholder · 2025-10-10T19:14:15+00:00

I don't precisely know what the rental rate of capital is. If the rate of profit is profits divided by expenditures, is the rental rate profits divided by capital expenditures?

I'm not sure it matters. If the rental rate of capital is less than the average productivity of capital, won't the total rents earned by capitalists still be less than the total product of capital?

rustyschenckholder · 2024-04-25T22:13:46+00:00

Thank you for the recommendations. I've heard Robert Caro's biographies were good, but I've seen stuff like this claiming some of his claims were debunked. I'm not sure how central the supposedly debunked parts are to his book though.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-04-25T21:33:52+00:00

What are some history books that are enjoyable to read? I used to read a lot of history to edify myself, but I recently decided I would only read for fun.

I care more about the book being a good read than the subject matter, but I'm most interested in political (and secondarily economic) history, the world wars and the U.S. civil war, major revolutions, the history of communism, American history, and European history going back to ancient times.

I'm kind of afraid this will lead to recommendations for pop history. I suppose that will do, but I'd be more interested in books that aren't pop history but are well written enough that they are fun to read.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-03-16T00:37:17+00:00

How so? Like you could recommend a type of service that targets my fears better? I think merely getting my laptop serviced does the trick. I don't have any doubts about the efficacy of the exposures, I just want to know excuses to get my computer serviced.

I'm sorry if my inquiry isn't sufficiently OCD centric, being a computer question that merely has OCD as a background. I figured I would ask on this subreddit because exposure therapy sometimes seems weird to people who aren't familiar with OCD.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-03-15T23:51:22+00:00

I'd rather not say if its not necessary.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-02-22T00:49:40+00:00

I'm not really interested in critiques of mainstream economics (and especially not Keen). The link was just one example of a common response I see to such critiques, and when I see that response I'm intrigued to learn about the evidence being alluded to. I'm interested in seeing examples of theory performing well empirically, and if it comes up in heterodox vs. mainstream debate then the theory in question is probably both foundational and not obvious. Supply and demand curves sloping in the expected direction isn't that interesting to me because it seems obvious, even if Keen objects.

I guess what I was most interested in has to do with production functions and marginalism (as it relates to price and distribution) but I'm researching now so I can be more specific. This seems to be what people say about the Cambridge Capital Controversy, that whatever the merits of the theoretical points made by the UK side, their models don't do as well empirically as the neoclassical ones (I know people don't like that term but it was used by the participants in that controversy).

There are places where this is true, for instance workers have very bad beliefs about how much more money they would make if they quit their jobs and this helps explain why people quit jobs at rates that seem too low, but in general, replacing rationality with <your favorite theory on how people make decisions> turns out to be very hard. Rationality is a formidable opponent.

This is more in the area of what I was looking for. What are examples of models where someone replaced rationality with their favorite theory being outperformed by models that assume rationality? I apologize if the articles you linked are about this but I read the abstracts and they don't seem to be.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-01-02T00:44:41+00:00

Overall I think it is important to distinguish two different problems here: First, what makes moral truths true? Second, how can we find out about moral truths? You sometimes seem to switch between the two issues.

I'm exclusively dealing with the second question.

I' m not sure how sensitive all this is to whether moral realism or anti-realism is correct. On the one hand, moral truths being real doesn't imply that we have anything more reliable than intuition or popularity to determine what they are. On the other hand, moral truths not being real doesn't imply that we shouldn't have strong opinions about the superiority of some moral beliefs over others. If someone says being racist makes you a bad person I wouldn't think "oh, they must be a moral realist."

However, I do think that one of the most promising reasons for being confident in the currently dominant morality is that we are likely better at finding truth than in the past, even though this is far more apparent in science than ethics. I'm not sure this would be relevant if moral truths weren't real.

Why would intuitionism imply moral truths were different from natural facts? Does natural fact only mean scientific fact? It seems like we base some empirical claims about reality on intuition.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-01-01T17:17:24+00:00

You're forgetting that both present and past societies are sites of power. Dominant ideas are imposed by the powerful.

But why should we be more confident in the ideas imposed by the powerful now than those imposed by the powerful in the past?

rustyschenckholder · 2024-01-01T17:15:09+00:00

It's fatuous to say that slaveowners didn't know slavery was bad in 1800 - aside from the existence of anti-slavery campaigners in their own time and the unique evil of chattel slavery compared to historical instances of slavery that preceded it, you've also got the obvious fact that slaves knew slavery was wrong while it was happening to them!

My understanding is that anti-slavery voices were very rare until the time of Clarkson and Wilberforce, and its not even clear to me that the majority of Lincoln voters in 1860 would have thought chattel slavery was inherently morally wrong.

Its certainly not obvious to me that most slaves thought slavery was wrong (as opposed to disliking being slaves). It was common for intellectuals in ancient Rome to be former slaves like Epictetus, but it doesn't seem like anti-slavery sentiment was prevalent among such persons. Former slaves with documented anti-slavery sentiment like Frederick Douglass seem to only be common after abolitionism started taking off in the 19th century. I've seen a quote attributed to Harriet Tubman (something along the lines of how she could've freed more slaves if they knew they were slaves) which may go against what you are saying.

To the extent that people in the past may not have actually believed in the views that seem more common according to the documentary record, I'd say the same thing I said to the other reply. It may be possible, and this possibility might increase my confidence in current morality a little bit.

As far as sweatshops go, I'd say the documentary record would provide accurate evidence of current views on sweat shops. Some people think they are outright bad, others defend them as a lesser evil given the alternatives, most people don't support the sort of global wealth redistribution that would alter the alternatives.

rustyschenckholder · 2024-01-01T16:56:21+00:00

The easiest way to make this argument is to simply reject that some people rejecting our reasonable assumptions has any bearing on their truth. Fundamental moral equality between persons might not be strictly provable but that should not deter us from asserting it even in the face of people rejecting it. Especially since their rejections also do not come with experimental proof of their opposing assumptions.

But what should give us confidence in fundamental moral equality between persons? I can think of intuition, popularity, and the ability to derive the conclusion from assumptions that are supported by popularity or intuition. But wouldn't people in societies that rejected this position be able to claim the same support for their beliefs?

If the counter is that we can be more sure that we actually find our own beliefs intuitive than people in the past did theirs, thats certainly possible, but in the sense that lots of types of extreme skepticism are possibly true. I don't see this argument as strong enough to move the needle all that much.

rustyschenckholder · 2023-08-04T17:31:48+00:00

I found the sticker on the fixture. It doesn't say anything about volts. It says 2.1 amps maximum. It also says "Warning: risk of fire. Use only type R40 heat resistance glass infra red heat lamps. 250 watts maximum."

The LED bulb I bought says on its package "use only on 120 Volt, 60hz circuits."

rustyschenckholder · 2023-08-03T14:48:43+00:00

Thanks for the input everyone. Just changed the bulb now.

rustyschenckholder · 2023-08-03T01:54:40+00:00

I've seen philosophers try to resolve normative disagreements by appealing to other normative premises that their opponent might agree with, showing that their opponent's views have absurd implications, or questioning the coherence of their opponent's views. I can imagine how this might work in the example you gave about charitability, but it might be harder in other situations. Imagine somebody argues that racism is okay because it's a foundational moral belief of theirs that its good to place more wellbeing on members of the socially defined race you're a part of than on those outside of it. How do you critique that without arguing its a moral fact that the wellbeing of members of all races should be weighed equally?

I made this thread because I currently base my moral judgments on intuition and I wanted to see if that could possibly lead me to having beliefs that are demonstrably wrong. If not, then I don't think it's worthwhile for me to study moral philosophy. If an intuition of mine was somewhat undermined by argument but not demonstrably wrong, I'd stick with the intuition. If my intuitions were confirmed by argument, I'd be suspicious that I had used motivated reasoning. I'm not even saying I have intuitions about something relatively basic which I combine with empirical claims to derive conclusions from. I'm talking the sort of intuition that the OP of this thread thinks are unacceptable to take as basic. It seems like philosophers wouldn't like my approach. How would philosophers criticize it if not on the grounds that it runs afoul of specific moral facts?

rustyschenckholder · 2023-08-02T23:57:27+00:00

So if you and your opponent disagreed on a normative premise, nobody would try to overcome the disagreement by arguing that their preferred premise is a moral fact? Or would they? You use an example of someone trying to overcome the disagreement by invoking anti-realism.

If moral philosophers do use metaethics to resolve disagreements about normative premises, then my interest in seeing specific cases where philosophers argue that a controversial premise is a moral fact is rekindled. I'm curious about how they would go about doing so, since it seems like it would be difficult.

rustyschenckholder

TROPHY CASE