Were not getting very far, we seem to be talking past eachother (I am discussing individual choices which you are not). I am asking how LTV helps us to calculate exploitation and explain why Joe buys a Dodge over a Nissan truck, the latter of which is explainable using market economic models which employ STV.I am not saying that LTV isnt useful in describing various broad economic phenonoma, dont imply that I am.
: I can show exploitation easilly - I must be employed, to employ means to use, to use is to exploit, my employer exploits my labour power, I work to make someone else rich.
How many $/units labor power etc etc were you being exploited by? Thats what you'll need to show. Shouting 'exploitation' is like shouting 'police brutality'. No one is going to listen unless you show the size of your bruises. Its not 'dead fucking easy' when people ask for evidence.
: Because I can't see any other way for them to make a profit. Me and my co-workers are not being paid the market value of our produce, that much is plain, the point then is to explain how that happens.
You and your co-workers can't create the market value of your produce without the 'factory'. In this sense it doesnt matter who owns it. If y'all did then thats groovy for you. Either way you cant make the value without accessing the means - I thought thats what socialism was all about.
Further more, worker ownership on a 'where you work' basis is not 'social ownership' in the sense socialism seems to imply. So if all the workers at Shell own the company - it doesnt do much for jobless Nigerians. To have everyone own all the means equally requires that those who are actually working at creating values agree to be 'exploited' by all those who are not.
: I can look at the sum of what all the workers in teh facory are paid, compared with the market value of its total produce, and deduce that the difference re[presents our rate of exploitation.
Thats a start - now apply this to 'socially owned' means of production against worker owned means of production. The first still involves exploitation of workers according to this model, the latter may not.
: You have strayed from teh point. your argument implies that you can't beat the logic I was presenting, but on a utilitarian basis, prefer not to accept it. really, Gee, I had more respect for you than to think you'd behave such.
I think your frustration is misplaced - my points were specifically those mentioned in the first paragraph of this post, a focus on the individual economic choices you consider irrelevent - even though they *must* in conglomoration make up the sum of the economy. Think of it as a 'bottom up' approach - rather than starting with a sweeping universal theory.
I'd like to read your thoughts on the social v worker ownership problem as far as 'exploitation' goes.
