What if wages are literally just compensation for energy expenditure?
Consider the following scenarios.
Scenario A:
An Industrialist receives a loan from a Banker on the condition that the Industrialist returns the loan + 15%. The Industrialist uses the entirety of the loan to purchase a workshop that has the capability to be used to produce Luxury Goods. The Industrialist hires a Worker to produce one unit of Luxury Goods. The Worker produces one unit of Luxury Goods using his energy + the capabilities of the workshop. The Industrialist then sells the one unit of Luxury Goods to an Aristocrat for the price of the loan + 20%. The Industrialist uses 5% of the amount to pay the Worker their wage and hands the rest to the Banker.
The Banker "made" 15%.
The Industrialist "made" nothing (but actually owns a workshop now equivalent to the loan).
The Worker "made" their wage.
So loan + 15% + 5%.
Workshop + interest + wage.
And one unit of Luxury Goods is equal to workshop + energy. The Aristocrat was only "charged extra" for the interest.
Scenario B
A Lumpen-Industrialist receives a loan from a Banker. The Lumpen-Industrialist purchases a workshop and declares bankruptcy. Because of some legal loophole fuckery that he abused, the Lumpen-Industrialist gets to keep the workshop without owing a cent. However, the Banker didn't necessarily lose anything aside from public trust, if the loan was actually "virtual money" (money that the Banker didn't physically have but promised to have at a future date).
The Lumpen-Industrialist "made" nothing (but again, actually, now owns a workshop equivalent to the loan).
The Banker "made" nothing (and possibly didn't lose anything except for public trust).
Scenario C
Just replace the Industrialist in Scenario A with a Worker's Co-op. The Worker's Co-op collectively owns the workshop, but still only receives wages in proportion to the energy expenditure, the rest of the money spent being the workshop + interest for the Banker.
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How is it that in all these scenarios, the common pattern of the "profit" for the owners is gaining the workshop itself? Industrialist ends with workshop. Lumpen-Industrialist ends with workshop. Worker's Co-op ends with workshop.
Yes, you need labor to produce one unit of Luxury Goods… with the "help" of the workshop, which is worth the entirety of the loan.
Where is the exploitation as a source of "profit" in these scenarios?
Nobody cares about your thread HAHAHAHAHA
Your example is totally irrelevant because many jobs pay wages below subsistence level; i.e. wage levels that are so low that you cannot even afford to feed yourself and rent a home day-to-day. If wages were truly one-to-one with energy expenditure this would be impossible.
>>2510439Energy expenditure is not a static value (really nothing is in capitalism). Labor power is affected by things like the reserve army of labor. Wages in non-productive jobs are affected by wages in productive jobs. And so on. As Marx wrote somewhere (I'll find it if anyone cares) the value of a house depends on jealously comparing it to other houses; its value is relative and shifting, in other words.
>>2510385Sad.
>>2511455Last time it was talked about here, the main issue was that the accounting system encouraged human treadmills to save energy; nothing stopping you from having another look
This seems like a useless complication to LTV or whatever
You have to factor in time as well as energy. If anything, time is the more costly expenditure than energy; we regenerate our energy every day when we eat and sleep but we never get our time back. That's just fuckin' gone man.
>>2511469The question is not the LTV itself, the question is the proportion of contribution and whether by default "profit" derives from unpaid working hours as is assumed by Marxists
Certainly we can say that if a worker in a sweatshop is forced to stay 1 hour longer one day of the week, and this hour is not paid even on paper, that fits the exploitation theory to a T
But "hidden" exploitation (paid on paper for all hours but actually underpaid and from this the owner siphons "profit") is the problem which is not so clear