The money earned from Assassin's Creed isn't by creating value, it's given by others who are creating value. I'm genuinely surprised I'm getting so many people disagreeing with this idea.
That's because the implication is that entertainment has no value, and that sort of argument can be reduced to absurdity. Do we really need any comfort? Sounds like the whole clothing industry other than wool and cotton shirt/pant producers are useless and even then only for what's needed in cold weather.
Most dyes are useless,colors are only useful to write signage.
The only cars that are useful are the ones that have the currently most fuel efficient setup.
Do we really need safety features? We already have enough people and any dead ones can be replaced.
Does getting people addicted to heroin add value? Because people will exchange their dollars for that too.
Just because people pay money for something doesn't mean it adds value or creates wealth. Rolling Stones is a tough case, some entertainment is necessary, but at what level and cost is up for debate, it's not like I have all the answers.
Necessities is a fixed amount, wants are (nearly) boundless. As we are able to afford things beyond bare necessities, pretty much all value create and consumed isn't 'necessary' - it's one or other kind of comfort, desire, status, entertainment, etc. Those things do add value and do create wealth - if getting enough nutrients and bare minimum of shelter takes just 10% of my resources, then 90% of my wealth is something that's not necessary.
If people prefer hearing a song over getting an (extra) loaf of bread, then hearing that song is by definition more valuable (more valued by that person) as that loaf of bread. There's not much debate needed about Rolling Stones - millions of people have expressed their values, and their choices illustrate that the music of Rolling Stones is literally more valuable than a billion loaves of bread; people have intentionally allocated a billion bread-loaves worth resources towards Rolling Stones because they valued Rolling Stones more than other alternatives.
People paying money for something doesn't necessarily mean it adds value or creates wealth, there are all kinds of edge cases like fraud, exploitation, addiction, etc, but in general, in the vast majority of cases it does mean exactly that - if people genuinely freely wanted to pay money for something and did so, then that's very informative about what they actually value; this is far more informative and truthful than, for example, what they claim they value.
I feel like this can't be said enough. Various kinds of minimalism, which are really just different ways of being left in peace, are now pleasures that are only reachable by the privileged classes. So of course these pleasures find a lot of enthusiasm here. Not that I'm any less enthusiastic than most here, but we shouldn't forget that out industry contains some of the worst offenders when it comes to distraction and interruption.
As someone who goes as long as possible without performing updates, this is exactly the reason why.
Example: Last time I updated my iPhone, the music app got an update and now they are trying to shove iCloud down my throat. Not to mention needless UI changes when I was more than satisfied with how it was before.
I understand this entirely, but there are some pretty bad iOS vulnerabilities out in the wild now (e.g. KRACK wpa2). It’s pretty dangerous to avoid updates nowadays.
I think what needs to happen across the industry is a complete decoupling of “feature” from security patching. Too many people are exposed because of exactly the kind of unwanted UI upgrades you describe.
> Security is used to euthanize perfectly working systems and harass users for money
That's a cynical and paranoid mindset. Bloat is a lazy tendency not a malicious evil and developers tend to optimise for the latest and greatest if left unchecked and forced to consider backwards compatibility.
> Better have a bricked phone but secured phone?
lets just say don't do any financial transactions on the device or appreciate the general openness of your phone to malicious actors who might use it for nefarious purposes.
That's a cynical and paranoid mindset. Bloat is a lazy tendency not a malicious evil and developers tend to optimise for the latest and greatest if left unchecked and forced to consider backwards compatibility.
As a user, do I care whether my phone is unusable because the developers wanted specifically to render older hardware unusable or whether it was just through their negligence in failing to consider older devices? Stupidity or malice, the result is the same.
lets just say don't do any financial transactions on the device or appreciate the general openness of your phone to malicious actors who might use it for nefarious purposes.
I keep hearing this, but what's the actual presence of malware on Android? If you're not installing shady apps from the Play Store, what's your actual level of risk? Android, even old versions of Android, are far harder to reliably exploit than say, unpatched Windows. As long as you're not installing free-to-play flashlight apps that require every permission under the sun, I'd say your exposure to malware on Android is far less than it is on PC. For the average user, they're still probably better off conducting financial transactions on their phone than conducting those same transactions on their malware ridden laptops.
Yes but whether we attribute the intent to stupidity or malice is important as per the general health of our thought process. Its likely laziness combined with malice when its noted. I imagine a dev getting up in arms about package size and then when the issue is raised its not given high priority because someone twigs the convenient side effect. That's the worst case.
Either way the mindset of paranoia is warped and self centred. Its not because they're thinking of forcing you to upgrade its more because they're _not_ thinking of you and instead the wide-eyed new sales opportunities that ship with greater disc space.
> I keep hearing this, but what's the actual presence of malware on Android?
oh wow, you're gonna play this game? I could tell you that its perfectly safe to trace the outline of a cliff with your feet and in many, many cases its going to be absolutely fine until the one case where the earth gives way and its not.
Let me put it this way; when I see the tagline:
> there are over a billion outdated Android devices
my first thought is:
> what's the most effective exploit to tap into that market?
the existence of security flaws encourages action and the hubris of not updating is the clarion call to those that exercise the exploits.
> I'd say your exposure to malware on Android is far less than it is on PC
This. What is this? This is complete conjecture. Get out of here.
> > what's the most effective exploit to tap into that market?
So??? What is it? Do let us know.
I'd venture to say that the fragmentation of that market makes it reasonably secure. Just like how the average router is incredibly insecure, and yet you don't advise people to avoid e-banking and just deal with their money in paper form and through face-to-face contacts.
Yes, you are technically right. But @quanticle is right, in practice: unless those users do some very stupid shit, they're pretty safe doing ebanking on their phones. (and those who do the "very stupid shit" are likely to do it on their computers, too)
Where are the Android LSASS worms? Or Android SQL Slammer? Or Android ILoveYou? Or Android NotPetya? Or any one of the literally hundreds of well-known malware strains that make the news every time they infect a few million PCs? Malware on Android certainly does exist, but the fact that Android has been out for this long, with this many outdated devices, and we haven't seen a single mass infection yet means that Android isn't as easy to exploit on a mass scale as people make it out to be.
I'm not claiming that Android is safe. Nothing is safe. But it does security professionals no good to be alarmists. If we cry wolf about literally every technology that ordinary people use, the result is not people giving up technology. The result is people ignoring security professionals.
If an ordinary user came to you and asked, "Where should I do my banking? On my phone or on my PC?" what would your answer be?
> I keep hearing this, but what's the actual presence of malware on Android? If you're not installing shady apps from the Play Store, what's your actual level of risk?
I wish I could quantify that. It's a hard task. But the store is not the only possible vector. On an old Android you're running a very outdated version of Chrome when looking at any pages / ads. That would be the most exposed/insecure element in the system.
> That's one reason I'm still hoping for a Linux/Firefox phone.
You should rather hope for GNU/Linux phones. Linux devices (without the GNU part) is most of the time, just another locked device (see your Android phone, router, TV, etc).
The presence of GNU software pieces (or any software licensed under GNU [LA]GPL v3+) ensures the device is free of locks (or with user breakable locks).
> The presence of GNU software pieces (or any software licensed under GNU [LA]GPL v3+) ensures the device is free of locks (or with user breakable locks).
That's not true, as the Linux kernel is still GPLv2. So while you could swap out the userspace GNU utils, the device manufacturer can still lock the bootloader which is perfectly fine with the GPLv2.
Even if the bootloader is unlockable (e.g. LG allows this btw), you will most likely be stuck to a specific kernel version due to proprietary binary blobs which nearly every phone uses.
So instead of a GNU/Linux phone, you should rather hope for a phone with complete open source drivers (or a GPLv3 kernel).
> That's not true, as the Linux kernel is still GPLv2. So while you could swap out the userspace GNU utils, the device manufacturer can still lock the bootloader which is perfectly fine with the GPLv2.
Yeah, probably. But the presence of packages like GNU libc can make it harder for the manufacturer to lock the device.
> ... kernel version due to proprietary binary blobs which nearly every phone uses.
Sadly, binary blobs are always an issue. In the case of Linux, this happened because many Linux developers don't care about binary blobs. If they did, you won't see any binary blobs (as it is a violation of GNU GPL).
> ... with complete open source drivers
My main point was to quote that 'open source' doesn't solve these issues. We should take software freedom more seriously.
> ... (or a GPLv3 kernel).
I wish we will not have to wait until the human civilization end in fire to see this.
> this happened because many Linux developers don't care about binary blobs.
It is mostly users, not developers, who don't care about binary blobs. The users then take the "pragmatic" approach of using binary blobs, but hey, stuff works for them.
See also the Nvidia binary driver. Who is the advocate for that? Users (hey, never had a problem and it runs my apps very well) or developers (whoa, we cannot develop Wayland/etc with this)?
> It is mostly users, not developers, who don't care about binary blobs.
Partly yes, but mostly No.
You are right that most people don't care about binary blobs. But the people who can enforce this are the developers. If all developers agree and enforce this, no on can include binary blobs in Linux kernel.
Also it would be wrong for a mere user to try to enforce it by law, because it might piss off the developers, which is really bad. Also, it might not withstand in court because the developers don't care.
> The users then take the "pragmatic" approach of using binary blobs, but hey, stuff works for them.
"pragmatic"? Most of us are concerned about our immediate problems, and thus we end up with temporary solutions (most of the time), sometimes because we don't have choice, sometimes because that's easier.
I recently got an ASUS eeepc which doesn't have graphics support, because when it was first released, the only support was a binary blob, which is now abandoned.
We will eventually face issues with these binary blobs, for sure. As we know, each day, new vulnerabilities are being surfaced.
But yeah, most of us won't care, until and unless something happen. But by then, it will be too late. Just like how many of us consider the importance of time only when we know we don't have enough.
> Also it would be wrong for a mere user to try to enforce it by law, because it might piss off the developers, which is really bad. Also, it might not withstand in court because the developers don't care.
And yet, it is the users who have the ultimate power over developers of such hw/sw. No, not courts, that's the entirely wrong solution.
Their wallets.
Such solutions are being developed only because there's money in it. It is only up to the users, whether this factor is true or not. If they care about sources, they would not purchase hardware that requires blobs. If they don't care, and reward the developers with their money for the blobs, whose fault it is?
The runtime exception makes it possible that everything else is proprietary, locked and unchangeable. Which actually is okay for apps IMHO, because I would want to run proprietary software like games (sandboxed of course).
The kernel really is the problem here and where there's no GPLv3 code used at all.
I'll grant you that GP was being pedantic but he is also correct. The only part in Debian/RHEL/Arch/whatever that is Linux is the kernel. "Linux" only refers to the kernel. So technically Android is also a distribution of Linux.
I think what you're arguing is that Android isn't GNU/Linux or that Android isn't libre like what we've come to expect from desktop distributions of Linux.
Librem 5, the phone that focuses on security by design and privacy protection by default. Running Free/Libre and Open Source software and a GNU+Linux Operating System designed to create an open development utopia, rather than the walled gardens from all other phone providers.
Isn't out yet and from what I can tell they haven't released much info about it yet. Maybe will be worth revisiting the idea when it's actually released.
Do you mean the worst that could happen to you personally or the worst for everyone?
When your device is compromised by hostile actors I guess it depends on what your nightmares are, but getting framed for child pornography and/or blackmailed for it is a popular one. Or getting your cloud accounts hijacked and all your stuff compromised. Or getting the bad guys access to your employer's network. Etc.
Collectively a widespread Android device botnet could take down a lot of infrastructure, or start a war, or ruin everyone's days with ransomware. I'm sure more imaginative people have thought about it.
Most phones already come with two persistent implants - the user-antagonistic OS, and the baseband processor!
I'm all for trusting computing devices to act as one's agents, but attempting to do so with anything resembling a modern mobile phone is barking up the wrong tree.
Even though just having one means taking the location-tracking hit from negligently designed cellular protocols, further exposure can be mitigated by using these little snitches for as little personal activity as possible.
At some point, reckless behavior affects people beyond the individual. I am irritated that people allow their systems, networks, devices etc to become compromised, thus becoming the assets of malicious actors. Most of the people in this category have are not particularly savvy, which doesn’t give them an out so much as it explains the predicament. However, you are demonstrating that you choose to be in this category, despite understanding the problem. You are letting your personal convictions get in the way of good judgement. You now shoulder responsibility for knowingly making the world a little less safe for the population at large.
It's very fucking weird that by pointing out the larger non-corporate context of digital security, it's being inferred that I deliberately do not secure my devices. I guess by not toeing the AppGoogAzon "Security (TM)" marketing lines, I just end up in that "other - outsider" category, and must be wrong.
I already explained a mechanic of causality whereby assorted end nodes being owned up actually increases our security, as it helps keep at bay the simplistic/totalitarian philosophy of tracking/controlling communication. But don't let that get in the way of the malunderstanding that is ultimately driving this nebulous desire for promised "security".
Do you have an actual number for "probably" - assuming normal browsing habits (i.e. not to the sort of porn site with a higher likelihood of installing malware), and an outdated version of iOS or Android?
How is that number changed by not using public wifi?
>i.e. not to the sort of porn site with a higher likelihood of installing malware
Porn sites are not where most malware comes from. Ad networks are. I've had more attempts at virus and malware installs from 'legitimate' sites that have had poor control of their banner ads.
I'm not assuming anything: I asked a question, rather than stating a fact.
"Not significantly" would be a valid answer to the second question. However, you seem to be answering "are home routers entirely secure?", which wasn't my question: my question was about real-world risk levels (i.e. "_are_ public wifi points significantly more likely to deliver threatening payloads", not "_could_ they be").
I'd still be interested in an answer to the main question.
Oh no, not a month's allocation of mobile data down the drain!
An impersonal passive botnet would likely do less damage than status quo "apps" that are built to siphon as much personal data as possible.
Never mind these few Mifi devices that I have - default configs that listen on wan telnet with static passwords! Well known domestic manufacturer, not worth attempting to report - the manufacturer obviously did not care, has long moved on, and there's countless other models with the same problem.
The panacea of every node being secure with an identifiable owner fell apart long ago. You can either cling to that belief in a fundamentalist manner (and prop up the totalitarians who wish to track communication ever more). Or you can work on understanding how non-technical people actually attempt to moderate their own exposure to these insecure-by-design surveillance devices.
Sure, and I didn't advocate doing otherwise. My point is the larger context - there is no "secure" on mobile.
Likewise, my point about losing a datacap was that it was preferable to having more personal info backhauled into commercial surveillance databases. It's not an either-or and I'm not desiring either one - just calling attention to the larger context of user-security versus the myopia of marketing/corporate security.
There is secure on mobile. Secure is not a binary property, it's a spectrum of options and possibilities which heavily depend on your environment and your threat model.
You either get security updates at the possible downside of sending more data to some database of a known vendor or you get the very possible risk of being part of a slide on DEFCON Fail Panel by some unknown blackhat.
I choose a known advesary over an unknown any day.
At its core, digital security is a binary property equivalent to mathematical proof. Since universal security is neigh impossible (two people can keep a secret if both are dead), we then predicate it on various trust relationships / threat models - what one is secure against.
The modern non-technical but security-conscious person concedes that their devices are pwnt by (ie they are forced to trust) AppGoogAzon anyway, and simply shies away from trusting technology. The phenomenon is what it is - I'm not advocating for it, but advocating for understanding it.
Furthermore, are you saying that you actually know all the players in the commercial surveillance industry?!
I'd appeal to your same argument of known versus unknown, but point out that at least the motives of the rando blackhat are known. Whereas the surveillance industry will be innovating new ways of monetizing their malicious databases for the next century!
It's not a "narrow mindset", but a formal basis that fosters analysis.
It's true that drive by black hats could be looking to snarf up all the personal information they can, and selling it into the corporate surveillance databases. I just think it's less likely than they're looking for a quick hit to defraud some banks.
It's not a matter of "paranoia" (there we go again with the handwavey maligning subjectivity!), but of looking at the outcomes. It's paradoxical - the things we think of as "bad" really are not that worrisome, because the shared goal is to correct them. Meanwhile the things we think are "just the way it is" form an insidious creeping trend.
I have very little fear of say my bank account being drained, because if that actually were to happen, then we're in general agreement that it will be made right - from bank policy on up to common law. Whereas if my de-facto mandatory insurance rates mysteriously double, there is both little immediate recourse and many people will even argue in support based on the just world fallacy!
I'm honestly quite surprised people went to the trouble of downvoting all of your comments on this thread; I think people are talking past each other and missing the bigger point that some threats are being ignored because of their insidious subtlety.
As another comment mentions; security is not binary.
Binary Security is a sign you failed at security. You can be not secure at all, somewhat secure, etc, against a set of threat models or anywhere in between those steps.
Whether or not you have properly prepared against a threat model and you are confident in defending against it is a binary property (or rather, two binary properties) but the underlying security is not.
> Most phones already come with two persistent implants - the user-antagonistic OS, and the baseband processor!
I don't trust Apple or Google to have my best interests at heart at all, but I am quite confident that neither of them will literally try to extort me with ransomware or kiddie porn. It's weird that you're equating the two.
Most people are willing to accept the risk that the NSA is listening in on them. Most people are not willing to accept the risk of an arbitrary person being able to steal their identity.
I am a USian. The nonsensical concept of "identity theft" has been promulgated by the surveillance industry to avoid responsibility for their own negligence. A person cannot become a "victim of fraud" in the way you describe. The banks are the only parties that stand to be defrauded, and they could avoid this by stopping to pretend that a few bits of semi-public information is enough to identify a person. So far it has been more profitable to keep the gravy train of easy credit rolling, which is fine. But that doesn't mean we should bear the burden for them!
When someone earnest talks about their "identity being stolen", I prefer to think of them as complaining that one of their friends bought the same pair of red Nikes or whatever.
This all might be true, but as a reason to not install patches, it still makes no sense. If you don’t trust the baseband or the OS, why did you buy the phone to begin with? You trust iOS n, but not iOS n+1?
One is forced to buy a phone, as an expectation/requirement of modern society. This does not imply they wish to spend even more money in support of the broken ecosystem every year/six months/etc.
Multiple release breaches are a pain for many reasons. It's very unlikely that companies would spend time doing that, even if they were given a chance to do so.
I can certainly see why multiple branches aren't popular - device fragmentation is bad enough without trying to identify which update branches are affected by some new security bug.
That said, I think companies that require up-to-date devices for security fixes deserve less leeway about the contents of their non-security releases. I've gotten multiple smartphone updates which I considered entirely harmful - they traded cosmetic or vendor-friendly changes against worse battery/performance/usability - and I think "let us break your device or you can't have security" is an unacceptable proposition.
It's more than UI changes: the update from iOS10 to 11 removed support for 32bit applications, rendering dozens of applications that I use daily (and have paid for a lot of money) unusable. So now I have to decide between two bad options - not being secure or losing all that invested money.
With the incentive structure of updates with certain popular software not supported by other revenue, you're always going to get a worse version (more ads, less features), to such an extent that I turn off all updates and only whitelist a few. Permissions are the ways to lock down phones, and security patches, not the permanent beta that is updates.
If you replaced SSN with a universal ID, that would imply that anyone filing a tax return would need one.
The purpose of voter ID laws is to suppress voting by poor people, especially African Americans, who lack ID because they do not drive, or have a difficult time meeting the standard of proof for getting an ID, or have difficulty going to the one DMV that supports their geography an hit away without a car. It’s the most recent of techniques used to suppress voting since the poll taxing and literacy tests of the reconstruction era.
Unfortunately my comment wasn’t well-received, but that doesn’t take away from the reality. A federal ID, unencumbered by the bullshittery imposed in many states, would be opposed bitterly.
It's not that weird. It's like any exchange of goods, both parties can come out with an advantage by getting something they want. In the case of Bitcoin Cash, 2 sides of the community got what they wanted.
The interested parties on either side would have been better off buying pre-fork and selling the one they didn't want, rather than buying after the fork, even though the end result is the same. That is irrational.
If people trade based upon information asymmetry, then the fact that Bitcoin Cash actually had miners, didn't crash fatally, and was capable of sending transactions constitutes an enormous change in the information landscape.
Pre fork BTC price + risk premium ~ BTC post fork + BCH
Pretend like the fork actually taking place and working successfully as comparable to a company's earning reports. The second that news comes in, it prices itself in almost immediately.
Very true - neither the person who wants BTC (but has no opinions on BCH) nor the BCH buyer wants to take the risk that the other coin will drop before he/she can sell it. In other words the risk premium isn't zero.
However a rational (impartial?) actor should be willing to take that risk if the premium is big enough. That could mean buying pre-fork or selling pre-fork if there is an obvious opportunity. Which means in an efficient market the risk premium should be zero "on average". It's hard to reason about averages with one sample but that sample was distinctly not zero!
Nod - I'm coming to the conclusion that the effective store of value is the mining infrastructure. Even if it's not that explicit, they move in lock-step.
"The value of a product is equivalent to the amount of labour exerceted in its production"
This is one of the most problematic statements ever made in Econ.
The 'value' of a product is different for everyone, and it's what you (or anyone else) will pay for it.
The idea that 'work = value' is one of the most distortionary ideas in business, even today.
Just had a discussion today about pricing a product, and it was derived from component prices. Trying to convince a room of people that 'price is not a function of cost' ... in 2017.
Yes - when things are commodities, often, price is a function of cost, because competitive pricing means just a small margin above cost, which will roughly be the same for most.
Exactly, which is why Marx uses the concept of a labor value, use value, and exchange value.
Labor is what's gone in, use is the inherent/intrinsic value in the object, and exchange value is what people will trade in exchange for it. That's a bad summary, and there's a lot more to the dialectic examination of them.
Reading Capital (along with David Harvey's lectures) is worth it if you find these things interesting, it's a deep analysis of markets and capital.
It still ignores scarcity and arbitrarily picks one specific limiting resource in the production process as essential. Labor theory of value might be interesting from a philosophical standpoint but really has no practical application when it comes to understanding the market. And it introduces a major can of worms when it presumes stuff like intrinsic value.
It doesn't ignore scarcity, scarce goods are inherently more labor intensive. And it doesn't presume intrinsic value, the labor necessary is a subjective concept so the value must be as well.
You're probably right about it's use in understanding a capitalist market, Marx spends no shortage of time on how capitalists warp that basic idea.
If your example isn't scarcity I don't know what to tell you, if better wine is "scarce" those labors are what is needed to make better wine.
Explain how it is possible, and how the situation does not immediately solve itself with you stopping doing something you hate and are bad at.
As many have pointed out, "value" is subjective. Your terrible wine may be loved by someone. Or you may really enjoy making wine. As wine has zero intrinsic value, it is a luxury good, it's very possible for both wines to be just as valuable.
It has plenty of meaning, it just doesn't explain "profit."
One wine being generally better than another, is not about 'scarcity'.
Yes - of course people will have differing opinions - but aggregate market demand can be different for something made with the same amount of labour - that is not an issue of scarcity.
i.e. 'most people' can view one wine as better than the other with equal amounts of labour.
Again - surely you can, if you want get into issues of 'scarcity' i.e. you can talk about production volumes etc. but that's kind of a second order issue.
I also found the wine example peculiar, as good wine and scarce wine aren't often the same, but I kept with it as it was brought up. Mistakenly I thought you had brought it up, sorry.
"Aggregate market demands" are capitalism, where wine is a status symbol and "good" wine generally refers to price. You are continuing to view this only in the eyes of capitalism and considering "value" to include "profit."
""Aggregate market demands" are capitalism, where wine is a status symbol and "good" wine generally refers to price"
No - what I meant by 'aggregate market demand' was really just 'average price / perception of value' - and 'good' does not refer to 'price' - good wine literally is better.
I am not equating value and profit. I am equating value and price.
Some goods are generally better than others (i.e. most people will think one is better than the other) and require the same labour - this is my point - and it's unrelated to scarcity.
I think my original point about wine was misunderstood. Good wine is not good because it is scarce, it is good because it is good, but it is more expensive because it is scarce.
If you could produce infinite quantities of Chateau-Petrus, it would be extremely cheap. But since it depends on being produced at a specific location, with a specific know-how, the quantities are limited. In this case, the amount of labour involved has little effect on the price of the wine.
First, and this isn't really relevant, price and scarcity play a much bigger role in what is considered "good wine" than you're saying.
Back on topic, "expensive" and "price" again add the concept of profit to the value produced. The only value of wine is enjoyment, so even Petrus wine has little more value than similar wines.
That increase in value is largely labor from learning the trade and long running slow maintenance. The only part that is scarce is the soil composition, something that could be recreated with a large amount of labor. Similarly, discovering that that area produced quality wine was labor intensive as well.
I am not doing a strong job explaining this subject, but you are dismissing it out of hand without an understanding of it. I recommend taking codemac's advice and reading some of Marx's work. Even if you disagree with him it provides a greater understanding of how the economy works.
I did read it (a long time ago) and I don't agree with him.
I just don't believe the labour theory of value is a useful concept.
I don't think Marx provides any understanding of how the economy works - other than to hint strongly that prices are really a function of power - i.e. when one group has a monopoly on some critical thing, i.e. land or capital, then they can use that to leverage over another group, and then you have basically class struggle.
I mean, it's useful rhetoric, I'm not sure if it's useful theory.
I don't think the 'labour' concept of value has any meaning at all.
Given how much our labour is amplified by machines, energy, machine intelligence, parts, equipment, R&D, support - it's not a very helpful way to think about anything.
It's also very unhelpful when considering prices of IP related things.
You study your whole life to become a great actor, you make a film - it only takes a month. Is it only a 'one month film'? Equivalent to the quality of a newby actor?
Almost everything requires at least some skill ...
> The 'value' of a product is different for everyone, and it's what you (or anyone else) will pay for it.
Marx did not dispute that. His point, rather, was that workers are paid significantly less than the actual value of the work that they do (because said value is directly measured by how much their product sold for, minus all the non-labor expenses).
And from there he concluded that the difference is the economic rent that the owner of the means of production is effectively extracting from those workers, by virtue of his ownership giving him the monopoly on them (or rather, by virtue of the capitalist class collectively having a monopoly on the means of production).
And that, being pure rent, it does not serve any useful purpose in the economy, except for the one collecting it - i.e. things would be more efficient if people couldn't collect rent like that, which he proposed to achieve by rejecting the notion that means of production can be privately owned in a way that also bestows ownership of whatever is produced by them.
The part he missed was there was value in risk taking, innovation, experimentation. The profits aren’t always completely a rent (though they can be in an uncompetitive market). Profit often covers real costs in a dynamic economy.
“Profit motive” was bunk psychology created by 19th century economists to explain away this discrepancy.
This isn't a problematic statement in economics, its a problematic statement in capitalism where the equation is "value=labor+profit." Subjective value isn't a problem as finding someone who values it a certain amount takes more labor.
The product you seem to be talking about is not part of 'the market'. Otherwise competition would drive the price down to intrinsic cost + small profit (remember the 'invisible hand'?)
10 years and 1000's of lawyers to find out whether Microsoft is a monopoly? Give me a break! Just look at their income statement!
Profit margins of 30% and more for 30 or more years? Do you seriously believe nobody would or could do the same for 20% profits?
A real market economy would tax away most of the excess profits after a certain number of years (depending on industry?). But then you would not have Apple and Microsoft and all your other beloved monopolists.
Ps:
I'm a bit undecided but maybe it's OK for luxury products to not be part of the market. If you want to pay $200 more for an additional 1 GB on your iPhone when the price for 1 GB is $20, then it's no skin of my nose.
But please make sure Apple pays their taxes.
And BTW - yes - I really do believe 'nobody can compete with Microsoft'.
Do you realize how sophisticated those products are?
And for every MS product, there are tons of competitors.
MS doesn't just make a 'widget' - they depend upon the talent (and ability to evolve that), deep value chain integration, R&D - it's a constantly moving team.
Taxing excess profits should be somewhat analogous to patents. (Well, except for the huge mess that patents these days are, but I am more talking about the conceptual reasoning behind them).
The creator gets a time limited monopoly to pay for his efforts. Nobody ever thought having an unlimited monopoly was good for society (well except for the guys actually having the monopoly, cuz you know it trickles down somehow).
Regarding the quality of MS products, why it's obvious that they used some of their monopoly rents to hire smart people to work on it.
But the point still stands that they were and still are a monopoly. Otherwise someone equally smart would have broken into their market and pushed profit margins down.
Except this ignores scarcity. And also ignores post-scarcity; this is the time period when robots do all work and farm all resources leaving humanity to decide the value of things divorced from rarity and labour. I will concede to Marx one aspect of his maxim; that is, scarcity is directly correlated with human effort towards a reseller market. So it still applies even if indirectly. For example, there is less labour spent trying to skim off the top of automotive mechanics work than labour spent reselling gold or limited edition Nike Airheads, etc....
The problem with mining rigs is that they have high upfront cost AND a short life span. Once a faster rig comes out, NOT upgrading is effectively a tax against future profits
At a really abstract level, yes. However, many computing tasks generate results that can be used near-infinitely. For example, that supercomputer that generates the weather can distribute the results to every person in the region.
Whereas in cryptocurrency, that's split. The miners provide security and integrity for the chain. They also take their own very specific fee.
No. Miners construct blocks that adhere to the protocol rules agreed upon by validating economic nodes (full nodes run by economic participants of the network).
Ask yourself why miners haven't forked to a version of Bitcoin that gives a higher block reward and you'll understand how it works. Nobody would accept these blocks as valid so the money they are "creating" would be worthless.
