Comment by Theodores
3 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
According to Marx, value is only created with human labour. This is not just a Marxist theory, it is an observation.
There may be lots of over-priced junk that makes you want to question this idea. But let's not nit-pick on that.
In two years time people will not see any value in AI art, quite correctly because there is not much human labour in creating it.
In two years time, no one will know what was created with AI, what was created by humans, or what was created by both.
> According to Marx, value is only created with human labour. This is not just a Marxist theory, it is an observation.
And yet it's completely and absolutely wrong. Value is created by the subjective utility offered to the consumer, irrespective of what inputs created the thing conveying that utility.
You are using marginal utility value theory. Parent comment is using labor value theory. In fact, there are also other value theories in economy. It's a mostly philosophical choice, and like other philosophical choices, it's not possible to accuse one of them of being wrong. It's a matter of choosing your philosophy, and understanding different philosophies.
> You are using marginal utility value theory. Parent comment is using labor value theory.
Yes, I'm aware. This is precisely why I'm stating the prior comment to be "absolutely wrong". Marginal utility is a substantially valid model, LTV is not.
> In fact, there are also other value theories in economy. It's a mostly philosophical choice, and like other philosophical choices, it's not possible to accuse one of them of being wrong.
Sure it is. These aren't theories in a normative sense, they're models of causality for manifest phenomena. They're closer to scientific theories than they are to philosophical axioms. LTV simply doesn't bear out with observation.
Labor theory of value is quite controversial, many economists call it tautological or even metaphysical. I also don't really see what LTV has to say about AI art, if anything, except that the economic value generated by AI art should be distributed to everybody and not just funneled to a few capitalists at the top. I would agree with that. It's true that more jobs get created even as jobs are destroyed, but it's also true that just as our ancestors fought for a 40 hour work week and a social safety net, we should be able to ask for more as computers become ever so productive.
In Marx's time, you needed humans to perform any kind of labor. Even machines needed operators. But there's nothing about LTV that would make it a hard requirement. The point of Marx's claim is that without someone performing labor using capital, there wouldn't be any value for the owner of said capital to pocket. This is just as true if you replace workers with AI.
> This is not just a Marxist theory, it is an observation.
Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man