the idea being that any two things produced by an hour of (human capital adjusted) labor must have the same value (btw, this “labor theory of value” goes back to Adam Smith, and was later promulgated by Marx).
Challenge: read the first chapter of Capital
Difficulty: impossible
Challenge: read ~~the first chapter of Capital~~
Difficulty: 
Reading just the first chapter will fry their brian
"He's not an economist!" Yeah, good. Fucking junk-ass non-science.
Extra rich that they’re whining about him being an anthropologist, when if economics was treated as being a serious academic field and not a hype man for capital, it would be considered a subset of anthropology or sociology.
Holy shit you're right I can't believe I never made that connection before. The gulf in the worldviews of anthropologists and economists is probably one of the biggest in academia, crazy how that works
Economics, I'm pretty sure, started out as a "soft" social science. But since it used math (and math can't be trusted :fry:) it was a very good vehicle for making "objective" arguments for doing inhumane things.
It doesn't even use math. It pretends to use math then gets pissy and throws out results when reality doesn't fit into it's wank-ass prediction curves, like the inflation-unemployment curve which is still taught as a real thing in econ 101, and it isnt until you get into behavioral economics that they start to drop hints that maybe they are wrong on some of their assumptions.
I literally just had a conversation with a PhD in economics where he (while drunk) admitted to me that they have no real idea what is going on in the economy writ large or have any actually consistent principals or practices. Very fun, definitely not worrying stuff.
Philosophical statements dressed up in Cartesian graphs in order to make them look math-y.
Another good example is how many Econ 101 classes teach that banks need to draw from holdings in order to issue loans, as if leverage isn’t a thing.
They actually do lots of serious economic studies in anthropology, usually focusing on reciprocal or 'gift economies", but there are also several studies on 'energy economies' that literally tries to track joul usage through a societal system. Fun stuff, very complicated.
Extra extra rich that that particular commentator doesn’t actually have much of an understanding of bourgeois economics beyond “Econ 101”.
the idea being that any two things produced by an hour of (human capital adjusted) labor must have the same value
when you definitely understand the labor theory of value
I haven’t read any communist works, but I can definitely criticize them!
This is just the stupid "Communism is when an hour of heart surgery is equivalent in value to an hour of burger flipping" but dressed differently
Okay this is not the nazcom guy, this is some anthropologist.
Economists shouldn't throw around accusations of "almost no understanding of Economics as a field" around near anthropologists or we'll pull out all the papers explaining why "Economics as as field" is a religion with at best a tenuous relation to any actually existing economy. You're on watch Economists don't fuck with us.
Okay back to whatever y'all we're doing.
why "Economics as as field" is a religion with at best a tenuous relation to any actually existing economy.
Would you be willing to make an effortpost on this? I always love reading about this sort of thing.
I'm not gonna effortpost about it but look into econophysics. It's mostly just sticking economic models through physics equations (eg. Treating money as a liquid and making predictions based on hydrodynamics), but it makes more accurate predictions than classical economics.
It's a very small field, but apparently it's infested with Marxists.
Seconded. Or even just pull out one or two of the papers.
s korea, Japan, Singapore
massive infusions of western capital in a desperate struggle against communism
china, Panama, Vietnam
socialism, dunno probably because they finally control the canal, socialism
n korea, India for second half of 20th century
sanctions and siege warfare by the west, and dunno
India had literal billions of dollars of production, goods, labor, services, etc, etc, etc, drained from it by British rule up until their independence. Its no shock that they've had struggles for the past ~70 years.
China emerged from its civil war at pretty much the same time and did massively better. While the British did commit atrocities and suppress industrialisation for a long time, India has been independent of British influence for long enough that other factors constitute most of the reason why it's in its current state.
Also, S. Korea, Taiwan and Singapore were “allowed” to have very non-neoliberal industrial policies that pragmatically speaking was much closer to how China grew their industrial capacity than anything resembling free market neoliberal “comparative advantage”.
In many African countries, corrupt border guards will demand bribes to allow the movement of goods, which can make trade unprofitable; thus, many farmers, who would otherwise specialize in food for export, decide instead produce food for personal consumption (subsistence farming), which reduces the value of their labor.
Can’t really read that and keep a straight face.
Full blown Degrasse Tyson syndrome .
That is just like 50 people going "New Zealand is in the global north, BWAAHH?!?"
That's why "imperialist core" is a better term.
Obligatory
Other facts that the authors’ framework will struggle to explain: why is it that the poor countries that most integrated with global trade networks became rich (s korea, Japan, Singapore)
A state of america, an actual fucking empire, a city-state on a vital geographic chokepoint. Not exactly the best standards of comparison. And was Japan ever "poor" in modern history? Was Singapore really? I'm only sure that S Korea was poor (and poorer than the america-bombed DPRK for quite a period of time too)
China, Vietnam
So are they finally admitting that socialism is good
Japan was a late industrialized country so if we consider the 20th century onwards then yeah they had a late start.
But to be sure whether you consider Japan a success or not is entirely irrelevant because I'm sure they'll are blissfully ignoring everything that happened since fucking 1980 or something. Japan was supposed to like China is today and it seems only god knows what sort of mysterious events stopped them surely nobody knows why their economy just "did that".
The Japanese miracle was definitely not intended and in the end should not be allowed to continue, but these idiots wont catch the irony there.
comparative advantage
hahahahaha so this is what taking psychic damage feels like
Oh yeah, here's a word that describes a thing, methinks mentioning that is real scientific rigor
The whole Global North/South split is a pet peeve of mine as a social scientist working in development policy. It's a bunch of outdated garbage from the Cold War that was really just a thinly veiled dogwhistle for 'white/the good Asians' and 'not white'. It doesn't hold up to any rational examination. South Africa was part of the Global North until white rule under Apartheid ended, and now they're in the Global South. southern nations.
Translation:
"I'm going to call you racist and uneducated for pointing out how my empire categorizes your brown nation as the 'Global South' and pretend this isn't the ideological justification we use for exploiting your resources."
Jason Hickel is an anthropologist (read: not economist) and degrowther. Despite having no background and seemingly almost no understanding of economics as a field, he somehow continues to get 'economics' papers published in reputable journals despite their obvious low quality. But to anyone with a cursory understanding of economics, it should be entirely unsurprising that exports from developing nations to developed are more labor intensive than vice-versa. This is not a novel conclusion and is not 'appropriation', but is entirely explained by a concept in economics called comparative advantage.
Translation:
"Me no like Jason Hickel, he no worship muh economy. We make politically correct word for exploitation!!!"
This paper is a demonstration of why input-output (IO) models are bad for economic research. IO models were used by the soviet central planners to allocate resources. IO models are bad for research for the same reason the are bad for planning. The authors look at “embodied labor” (adjusted for human capital), the idea being that any two things produced by an hour of (human capital adjusted) labor must have the same value (btw, this “labor theory of value” goes back to Adam Smith, and was later promulgated by Marx).
Other facts that the authors’ framework will struggle to explain: why is it that the poor countries that most integrated with global trade networks became rich (s korea, Japan, Singapore) or are otherwise growing quickly (china, Panama, Vietnam)? Why is it that countries with severe barriers to trade with the global north struggle to grow (n Korea, India for second half of 20th century)? That’s very hard to explain if trade with the global north is fundamentally exploitative.
Translation:
"REEEEEE MUH GOMMUNISM IO SOVIET BAD!!!111!!! Why did these western military and trading outposts run by neoliberal dictators we pumped tons of money into.... get rich?!?! Why is socialism good?!?!? Why is it that sanctions and genocide make countries poor!?!??!?! THAT IS VERY HARD TO EXPLAIN!!!111!!!"
Top minds.
Also they're wrong about South Africa, it was a sub-imperialist nation during apartheid and continues to be sub-imperialist in many ways now.
IO models are bad for research for the same reason the are bad for planning.
Just wait until this guy figures out how factories actually do resource allocation
exports from developing nations to developed are more labor intensive than vice-versa
Fucker! Did you even READ our text books? Did you skip the section talking about perverse incentives and moral hazards?
Other facts that the authors’ framework will struggle to explain: why is it that the poor countries that most integrated with global trade networks became rich (s korea, Japan, Singapore) or are otherwise growing quickly (china, Panama, Vietnam)?
The country didn't get rich you fucks, SOME people in that country got rich you absolute bellends.
it should be entirely unsurprising that exports from developing nations to developed are more labor intensive than vice-versa. This is not a novel conclusion and is not 'appropriation', but is entirely explained by a concept in economics called comparative advantage
so... not really arguing against Unequal Exchange as a concept, just against the name that makes you uncomfortable
Akshually sweatie that’s not imperialism it’s called international finance so I’m glad I debunked that for you you’re welcome
I thought that said Jackson Hinkle for a second at got really confused.
I always mix these two up. Every time I see one mentioned I'm like "okay the good one or the bad one"
Anyone who thinks the economy is real is a fool
Anthropology is real, political economy is real, economics is fake. That's why an anthropologist can publish bangers in economics journals.
I’m so confused by that last bit, do they think countries can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become perfectly developed without any trade? They’re literally saying “dang isn’t it weird that embargoes and harsh sanctions work” to prove their point. Yeah no shit you need to be integrated with global trade networks to gain access to resources you can’t extract/create internally. That doesn’t mean that trade deals with great powers are fair and not ruthlessly exploiting the different market conditions. Just because you get some benefit from a bad deal you’re strong armed into taking doesn’t make it not exploitative (labor). What a shock that becoming a puppet state in strategic location leads to more foreign investment, clearly this proves neo-imperialism is actually based and good for everyone
I've always hated reddit. Like, I used to be Angry Online about the existence of reddit before it was a normie hotspot - i know hexbear is running a similar system, but aglo driven discussion hierarhcy is literally discourse poison and at volume everyone is so stupid that what's popular will inevitably be really dumb - I love that the thread is filled with people throwing "degrowther" out like a slur, because it's really telling in the worst way that they worship Number Go Up and the upside of this is you can assume everything downstream in their book-length post is pure ideology and cope - and if you're smart enough to already know they're the court soothsayers whose main job is justifying American hegemony by exalting the virtue of Number and doing the equivalent of parlor tricks with numbers to categorize sub.Number.x-y in such a way that comports to their worldview and has, if not a moral justification, a "rationalized" one - something that a dumb person or a sociopath can go "hey it sucks but that's just the way It Works"
A traditionally trained Astrologer will literally have a higher predictive hit rate than these people for any matter they ostensibly went to school to "understand"
It would be funny if these people weren't a big part of how this massively unjust thing we all live under justifies itself.
(it's still pretty funny)
What's funny is if you ever talk to wealthy people they will admit to basically all this shit as long as you pretend like you don't have a problem with it. Like I had the misfortune recently of being around some yuppie types who talked like an LLM trained on Financial Times articles and I literally made a statement about how the US controls the world's financial system and it funnels resources from "poorer" countries and their response was essentially "That's exactly right!" with a chuckle. They just don't like when you point out that what they are doing by participating in the system is fucking evil.
I know it's fun to dunk on these people and it helps us build our own knowledge and understanding but never forget that these people know exactly what they are doing, this is all defensive posturing, and if you schmoozed them up at hotel bar all of their real thoughts and feelings would come pouring out. Don't get too mad or frustrated about this shit because it's all a performance. Yes I'm saying this mostly for myself.
the poor countries that most integrated with global trade networks became rich (s korea, Japan, Singapore)
a bunch of investment and knowledge/technological transfer?
Oh wow I wonder why South Korea, Japan, and Singapore all became integrated with global capitalism. Huh, weird. Must have just been a good decision their leaders made.
"ummmm sweaty studying people doesn't give you the right to talk about people, only I have it with my shitty fake numbers PhD"
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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