>>25705>>25706>My point is that prices exist because there is a want for merchants to fetch profit, rather than because of some law of nature or the universe.… and competition draws prices closer to the cost of production, which indeed, is a threshold for commerce - thus, commodities are regulated by a "natural price". if you had a socialist society which traded goods for labour vouchers, what regulates the price? their cost of production, no? the market necessarily does the same in a space of "perfect competition". it can be demonstrated, even in marx's proof (e.g. capital vol. 1, ch. 12), that where capitalists compete and innovate the means of production, the "social value" of goods will naturally decrease, until the point of monopoly, where innovation ceases.
you must understand how in a market, profits are made by lowering prices, while with monopolies, its made by raising prices (since profit as the end of capital can only be regulated by a competition of capitals - this is also what adam smith writes; that where capitals compete, wages increase, and where labour competes, profits increase). thus, where you have monopoly you have unemployment, which causes labour to be depreciated in value (at the capacity of full employment).
as a thought experiment, if there was a global government with one mega city, would the 8 billion people working for the same employer and living in the same city be richer or poorer than if they lived and worked in separate places?