U.S. Government shuts down.

[Jester]

Labor HAS to be valuable.

Who would claim labour has no value? Nobody. Certainly not neoclassical economists.

Without labor, nothing gets produced. Nothing.

Only if you define production in such a way as to include human labour by definition, which is then just a tautology.

To give a useful example: There is a gigantic ball of hydrogen fusion about six light seconds away from the earth. We call this the sun. It emits photons, which are absorbed by oxygen and glucose producing solar panels on earth. We call these plants. You, the consumer, are currently consuming the product (breathable oxygen) of this production process. At no point did it require any human to input any labour, unless you're counting breathing.

This is the problem with marginal utility theory - that Marx critiqued in the first chapter of Capital by differentiating between 'use value' and 'exchange value'. A Bentley has more value than water, but only because of the exchange values assigned to them under a capitalist system. Supply and demand seems nonsensical also, since there is a greater demand for water than there is Bentleys (since we need the former to survive), yet the latter is higher priced cause of its higher exchange value.

This is a hash. Things trade at their exchange value, and since the overwhelming majority of what we produce is to trade with other people, exchange value rules the roost. Your critique is no critique. What does marginalism predict? That the product whose *next* unit is costly, is costly, and the product whose next unit is cheap, is cheap. Lo and behold: producing another Bentley would be costly, and so, Bentleys are costly. Producing another unit (a gallon, say) of human-usable water is very, very cheap. And so, it is cheap.

Supply and demand is about the *intersection* of the two forces. People demand a lot of water, but they supply even more than that, and are willing to keep supplying the next unit of it, if people wanted to consume more.

Do you have an actual critique of this theory of value? Because the guy you linked doesn't. He says: "However, in my view the theories are different ways of thinking about economics. Neither is right and the other wrong." And then seems to suggest that it's just a matter of culture which you believe. Which appears to be the opposite of your point.

I am afraid that it has only further confirmed for me just how irrational, illogical, and invalid of a system that capitalism really is.

Surprise.

-Jester