Refuting 'Surplus Labor' Once and for All!

A clear demonstration, with numbers, as to how so-called "surplus labor" is just socialists not understanding the first thing about business.

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[liberemur]

" will you pick fruit for $10 dollars an hour"
"sure that's a good deal"
"he is being exploted lets kill him
#Comradlogic

[ozertayiz]

There is no "surplus value" because value is subjective, and it is whatever the buyer and seller both agrees upon.

[MyCentsVideos]

Utterly debunked in under 7 minutes. Excellent video!

[harryalexander]

But that's not REAAAAL Surplus Labor!

...wait.

[voswouter]

This stuff won't sink in.
Government pushes people towards less and less rationality by rewarding lack of it and making rational people pay the bills.
We likely need a total collapse.
The internet might allow us to save civilization, but we need to be right on the issue.
I think understanding why they do these things can help and it reduces frustration.

[darththork]

Here's an even quicker argument against surplus value: Labor doesn't have any value. It's results are only worth what people are willing to pay for it. So unless you do the marketing and shipping, as well as look at market signals to see how much to produce, then you aren't creating any value.

[DerekPower]

Most excellent =D

I would also add that the problem with their revolution is their "means seizure" would mean they are in charge and thus would make them the "capitalist class". (And practically, those in the government really did act like they were in such a class ... with having posh benefits and all while everyone else had to deal with bread lines, which was futile as you had food shortages anyway.). Similarly, all one would be doing is replacing one owner with another where very little else change, if any.

My own counter to the "seize the means of production" rallying cry is as follows. Time was if you were songwriter, musician, music producer, composer and you wanted to make music and get your music heard, you had to be work with a couple of different companies: a publishing company so royalties can go to you and the record company who would sell recordings of your work out to market. Now there has been a long string of anecdotes about how unfair this arrangement was (some of it is legitimate but other cases demonstrates a gross ignorance of how economics works ... on the part of the artist). Now you could do everything yourself but you can only go so far with your reach, even with the Internet.

That changed in 2007 with the launch of two sites: TuneCore and Bandcamp. TuneCore allows anyone to host their music through iTunes and other major digital music stories, whereas before that was only allowed for artists signed to major or recognized labels for an annual fee. Bandcamp is its own distribution channel where you have control over what is released, how it is heard and paid for, and your music is presented nicely in a standard template (beats peer-to-peer file sharing in terms of aesthetics). Thus, you can now go completely independent, not be beholden to any other company *and* you get the perk of having a large potential reach. In other words, you get the reach of a major label without having to sell anything of yours.

My point is that if we merely follow that rallying cry of "seize the means of production", recording artists and songwriters would just kill the company owners and just take over the reins and, in the end, they be no different than their former "oppressors". But this didn't involve any seizing whatsoever. In fact, this was the market at play where a service was provided with clear and reasonable terms and people flocked to it. Basically, the means of production weren't seized; a new one was made.

[Dilbert]

If you wanted to, you could simply get some workers together, pool together your resources, and then start your own socialist company within a Capitalist system. The fact that they don't do that should make you wonder whether or not such a system would work.

[restinpeace]

Can somebody point out how many widgets they sell and for what price and how this amount changes when company grows, it's crucial to have full understanding of this model.

[ExPwner]

Solid presentation! I usually just link to Bohm-Bawerk's critique of LTV by showing that someone like Alice in this example is expecting a return on investment over time. Marxists want the *future* value of their work in the present, which ignores the time value of money. If you want the full amount of profit, the burden is on you to invest or otherwise look for profit sharing businesses that want to hire. However, there is no injustice in the business owner saying that for $1000 invested they want more than $1000 in return. Marxists even fail at basic finance, and that's not factoring in the risk of loss!

[devonwesleyhahnkurkowski]

The workers accept wage labor because they simply need money to pay the bills and put food on their plat. In a world were all land is privately owned by the state or corporation the worker must accept the obligations of the capitalists. That worker may be self employed, but will be crushed by larger corporations and the free market because buying goods from larger corporations would be cheaper than smaller local business.

[csisco]

your example sucks dude, in real life Alice would not hire those other guys if they were going to get paid the same amount they produce. surplus of labor means that the owner keeps the difference between what the worker produces what the owner pays him and thats what exploitation means.

[brandonsimpson]

So explain why; when working for a employer where you prove to be three times more productive than other employees doing the same job, seldom are you entitled to two or three times the pay?

[kodeym]

Makes the FLat Earth hypothesis seem realistic.

[backalleyphilosophy]

Co-ops are the most ridiculous business model

Say for example, you have a multi million dollar business which has a few thousand employees. The employees make a nice sized salary because of their profits. But the company has to spend MILLIONS in order to maintain profits. This model in the long run PENALIZES success, and growth because the bigger your business gets, the fewer profits you obtain.
And the more it costs workers to maintain it

If your business has the conditions of a worker co-op; where growth equals a loss of revenue, and losses shared are greater. All this means is that people are working harder and earning less.
IE: Pretty much the exact fucking opposite of what they're trying to accomplish.
Which by the way, is a consistent theme in Socialism/Communism. A proposition is made, in application it leads to the exact opposite of the desired results.

[travisretriever]

I always did love these more academic style videos of yours. As much as I love your Lord Killian videos, the stupid you have to deal with them, even when mitigated by you in them, is enough to make my brain hurt.

[nicosmind]

Look at the amount of businesses that make a loss. The workers obviously owe them money. Time to get selling their houses me thinks

[hadmiar]

Wonderful presentation Shane! Additionally, you should address that some Marxists respond to this claim by pointing to the so-called "army of the unemployed" and say that businesses don't need to compete because there are so many available workers. Leave aside information assymetries and the fact that each individual business does not have a "surplus labor pool" due to location and time constraints (hiring workers is a long process on its own), workers are not identical. Different skills and productive capacities (marginal products) make different workers more attractive to many employers. Additionally, as long as there is free entry and exit, individual workers will constantly be moving from idleness to productive employment.

[BeigeEyesCroissantDragon]

All of her employee's take home more a week than I do after taxes. :c

[shanedk]

Eric Williams has been blocked for false accusations of murder.