Are you saying that “left-libertarians” don’t generally end up appealing to some objective theory of value? If so, why?
…because they don’t.
The closest I can think of is Francois who would argue that the value of a product, or at least the price, is based on the labor put into it, that is, what the laborer is willing to sell it for. Say they put in 5 hours. What that 5 hours is worth is up to the laborer and is anything but objective. And then again, I’m not sure that’s an accurate representation of what Francois thinks. Either way, his theory of value isn’t “objective.”
Then there’s basically everyone who has some kind of subjective LTV, the bunch that don’t care, and the bunch that are moving towards liking gift economies anyway. Oh, and this is all people on the forums.
The big name left libertarians that are further right than most people on the FLL board almost all adhere to some kind of STV.
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One of the best argumentation against the the impossibility of knowledge (understood as a set of statements that pass the validity test) which is the logical consequence of the widespread hermeneutics in contemporany social scientists, theory as a discourse as a narration, reality as a narration, etc, is found in the Ethics and Economics of Private Property by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In particular see the chapter 9 “On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology”. The amount of self-contradictions that Hoppe finds in those lines of argmentation is astonishing.
Are you saying he considers the value of a product to be that, or are you saying that he’s claiming the value of a product is that? Do you see the difference there? The former is expressing a (necessarily subjective) opinion, while the latter is claiming a (necessarily objective) fact.
As I asked in the FLL, which really upset some people (cough Shawn P. Wilbur cough) - what’s the substantive (i.e. not stylistic/aesthetic) difference between the subjective theory of value and the subjective labor theory of value?
How can there be multiple kinds of subjective theory of value? Otherwise, I find it interesting that the big-name left-libertarians are further right than most people in the FLL.
I don’t understand how value can be determined either solely objectively or solely subjectively. I mean, you can say that an object is valuable because the subject is hungry. But you can also say that the object is valuable because the object is edible. So which fact determines the value–that the subject is hungry or that the object is edible? Is it not both?
At a glance, the name subjective theory of value doesn’t make much sense to me. But maybe they have something else in mind when they say subjective. I haven’t really looked into it very much.
AE recognises objective, technological use-value (e.g. a human can use an axe to chop wood or to cut someone’s arm off) but notes that subjective utility need not have anything to do with this. I could value an axe above all other things because I believe it gives me magical powers - or just because I want it.
“Subjective” and “objective” are typically used in the sense of the dualistic philosophy of mind.
Quick thougt while not reading much
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“Economics is a social construct” may be a good way to show why Austrianism actually does show the silliness of other economic schools. In order to talk about any of this stuff - we need a syllogism, axiom, etc. It is still no refutation by LL’s though. We are saying this is an unavoidable consequense of talking about the actual factual word. The min we get out of absolute cosmological nihilism - which would require someone to be blind, deaf, dumb - or flat out insane is the min we hit a praxeological look at the social sciences.
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Economics can not be proscriptive. It just a science. Anyone asking moral questions, property right questions or “how is capitalism better here” is not addressing economics as a social construct.
In so much as biology exists economics exists and is real. In so much as I can look at facts,logical order, and real consequences in biology I can do so with economics. In so much as biology is not applied medicine - economics delievers no proscription. In the fact that you say evolution does not exist and here are the consequences - the same is so with economics and much leftist action. It can not tolerate language that is nonsense that tries to interfere on it’s turf.
“Subjective” and “objective” are typically used in the sense of the dualistic philosophy of mind.
That article doesn’t really use the terms, but I’ll figure it out when I study the STV.
Other clarifiers:
Subjectivism = “actually extant” or “obvious manifestation of force. Which automtically is going to imply hard materialism and hard determinism (by the definitions of “manifest”,” force", and the very nature that we can reason and use logic at all). Things are “obvious” because they are ontological…which is what makes Aristotle (minus teleology), Stirner, and Mises imperative to understanding the social and ontological world. The fact that we can talk about them with any sense is “inter subjectivity” and it rests on the uncontestable notion that we are inescapably in the “world of facts” not things.
The world is nothing but atomic “things that push” (force) - we observe them through our kalediscopic lense and talk about them - not the “essence” in itself of them; there is no “man”, “chair”, “nation”, etc - there is only a “chair for our purpose”, etc. We do this because we talk abot stuff - but there is no nature of such things - which leads to all types of confusion (it doesn’t matter if a glass is half empty or full, or "when Theseus’ ship is no longe Theseus’ ship - it’s a mind trick). There is no “human nature” there are however actions/ processes that can measure these brute forces - and ontology has to be addressed.
The most consistent application of subjectivism will always be ontological egoism.
"vanity of vanities; all is vanity