VanguardYouAndDie posted:

the irc channel for the SAL board on SA.

It's p fun; we all gang up on sirbruce (who is an actual economist lol) every now and then. We also have a historian who is getting her Master's in the prison thread shit and a PhD in the child prison thread shit. We also have a few hipsters and a depressed jewish engineer. It's p much "left" and actual left wing academic central.

Then there's helopticor but he's some kind of martian.

if i wanted to talk to graduate students id put on pants and go to work

littlegreenpills posted:

but how is the difference between useless and useful labour, or between a useful and a useless commodity determined? i don't think it's as trivial as all that, even though the argument in that article is clearly based on a trivial understanding of marx

If producers produce commodities below the socially average labour-cost, they obtain extra profit upon sale at the ruling market prices, and conversely those producing at above this cost make a proportionate loss. A constant incentive therefore exists to reduce labour-costs by increasing the productivity of the labour force.

This can be done through higher exploitation, economising on costs, and better equipment. The long-run effect is that it takes less and less labour-time to produce a commodity. Enterprises cannot usually do very much about reducing their fixed input costs, because these are rarely under their control. But they can always try to reduce their labour costs.

"Socially necessary labour" therefore refers to at least three economic relationships:

• between the specific productivity of a producer and the average productivity in his branch;
  
  
• between the outputs of the branch of production and social needs manifested in monetarily effective demand; and
  
  
• between the output of a producer, and the output of the whole branch (that can be sold).
  

• labour time necessary for the production of a given amount of a commodity - this quantity defines the aggregate value of the output, arising from the nature of a commodity as a bearer of exchange-value;
  
  
• the quantity of labour time socially necessary to produce the appropriate amount of the product, i.e. the amount of a product which at the production price meets the effective demand for it - this quantity defines the correspondence between the total quantity of the commodity produced as use-values and the effective demand for those use-values.
  

TROT_CUMLOVER posted:

Jerthebear posted:

economics students tend to lean to the left because they are taught through a predominantly neo-keynesian lens. austrian has become a dirty word throughout academia.

you say "become" like austrian economics was ever at any point considered respectable in academia

almost all of the leading austrian economists have won noble prizes among other accolades..

Jerthebear posted:

and i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that milton friedman was among the top 3 most influential economists of the 20th century.

milton friedman wasn't austrian school lmbo

TROT_CUMLOVER posted:

Jerthebear posted:

almost all of the leading austrian economists have won noble prizes among other accolades..

so hayek and nobody else then, right

hayek, mises, friedman, stigler, buchanan...

edit; friedman, stigler, and buchanan being of the chicago school which is just the american continuation of the austrian tradition.

Groulxsmith posted:

hahaha friedman the austrian, stockbrokers jumping out of windows because the Dow falls 200 points, the rhizzone is a great reminder of how leftists revel in being ignorant over the yucky subjects and then ponder their own irrelevance

WeedSmoker420 posted:

Jerthebear posted:

and i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that milton friedman was among the top 3 most influential economists of the 20th century.

It's either him or Keynes. Friedman ended up diagnosing the Depression and defining our monetary policy, but Keynes created a lot of debt, bureaucratic makework, rioting and inflation.

Friedman is pretty weak on the Depression, especially in his earlier years. He used to say the failure of the Fed was they actually DIDN'T spend enough before the bank runs, and then later obviously changed his tune to abolish the Fed.

Groulxsmith posted:

Like these probably seem like trivial differences when your main concern of political economy is workers controlling the means of bicycle production en route to full crustpunkunism or whatever but hand waving it away as the same thing is like when your college republican club writes a letter to the school paper about the folly of inviting known Marxist Noam Chomsky to speak

I'm not a leftist.

TROT_CUMLOVER posted:

FRIEDMAN I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You’ve just got to let it cure itself. You can’t do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.

What year is that quote from?

Jerthebear posted:

as a side note, do you guys realize how much you discourage debate and genuine discussion on this forum?

SILENCE KNAVE!!!

Jerthebear posted:

Friedman is pretty weak on the Depression, especially in his earlier years. He used to say the failure of the Fed was they actually DIDN'T spend enough before the bank runs, and then later obviously changed his tune to abolish the Fed.

He did not change his tune on that. That is what caused the Depression, and the Fed (via Ben Bernanke) acknowledges it. They implemented his policy this time, which is why we didn't have a total banking collapse. He does think the Fed isn't the ideal solution to the problem of monetary policy, but I think he would be quite happy with Bernanke's actions.

See the last paragraph of this speech: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20021108/default.htm

animedad posted:

innsmouthful posted:

if you wanted legit debate and discussion it would require people actually knowing something about something, which, well... rhizzone lmao

illiterate writers, drunks, members of the enlarged population, and/or the unapproachably handsome. rhizzone and proud.

enlarged members huh? i see what glue sniffers krew is all about now

Jerthebear posted:

TROT_CUMLOVER posted:

you say "become" like austrian economics was ever at any point considered respectable in academia

that was the question. not whether or not austrians are deserving of respect. please argue one point at a time or this gets a little tricky.

lol