How do socialist econemys quantify the value of a service. I can see goods but I don't understand services...

How do socialist econemys quantify the value of a service. I can see goods but I don't understand services. How does it work?

Now, which kind of value are you talking about? "Value" in marxist terms is the average labor time necessary for a given society to produce a commodity. "Use-value" is a qualitative value of a given commodity to an individual. "Exchange value" is what a commodity can be traded for, and it can be determined by using a third commodity as a reference.

Services are just like other commodities. Their value is determined by the labor time required to produce them. Their use-value is determined by its use to the parties who consumes them. Their exchange value is determined by what they can be exchanged for.

But isn't some work harder than others?

and also I mean economic value. A socialism society with money would be more acceptable to the masses.

Use value.

Of course. What does that have to do with it?

You are going to have to define that term. All forms of value are economic.

In abstract capitalism. In a planned economy where the means of production aren't traded on a market and there are bureaucratic procedures for setting prices of consumer items and services, whether these procedures are more or less democratic, services are harder to regulate than production of tangible things.

Imagine, five years from now, your title and rank is consumer protector inspector deluxe, and your task is inspecting things and services produced in Corbyngrad (aka London). You can inspect storage rooms of tangible things and count them or at least eyeball the amount, and take a random sample to check the quality. You can go into shops undercover and request some items and see whether the clerk gives you the stuff for the set price, or whether he hoards it and demands more (if society got electronic labour vouchers, he won't demand a higher price, but he may demand some favours in addition to the set price). How do you inspect a service? It's not impossible, but it usually takes way more time to inspect an hour of human time going into a service than an hour of human time going into producing a tangible thing. I would expect a lot of black market activity in services.

I'd advocate a subscription system, with access to different tiers of available services and amounts of goods. Then have a democratic mechanism where the federation/state determine each industries average remuneration (if you quantify the subscription tiers with a points system) then a delegation of leaders from all the firms in the industry vote on average remuneration for each firm (out of the total allotted), then workers in the firm vote on the remuneration for each worker or class of workers in the firm, based on how many hours they work or as a salary for a job performed
I'm sure this is a debated topic among state-socialists
You then plan based on what people have subscribed for, erring on the side of overproduction.
If you are on average as efficient as capitalist firms, and have full employment, you should produce more overall than a similar capitalist economy

Ah, so its dependent on the workforce/technology, not simply "hard work"?

Socialist don't want to use the LTV to calculate value, that's a completely different theory from the LTV in Marxian economics. Marx didn't say "labour creates value, therefore we will measure value in labour", it was an explanation of the mechanisms that take place to form price in capitalism after supply and demand are established.

Basically.

Take for example a case where a large hole needs to be dug for SOME reason. A single worker with a shovel can get the job done perhaps in a week's time. A single worker with a mechanical digger may be able to get the same job done in a day or less. Given the scale of the job in question and the frequency it needs to be done in a society (basically for most construction jobs), the average labor time would be more attuned to the time it takes for a mechanical digger complete the task rather than the man with a shovel. The value of his labor is likewise evaluated based on the labor time the job SHOULD have taken rather than the labor time it actually took due to known inefficient practice.

That's irrelevant to socialism though, we should be calculating value based on use value.

yes but we also have to have varied remuneration based on work in socialism.
Thus there has to be a balance between what is produced, and how much each person has access to.
Now, one way around this is to have all remuneration be equal through government services and rationed by need, then just have varied remuneration by letting more productive people work less hours as reward for being less productive. that would simplify planning.
just throwing out ideas here, I'm not sure what the best way would be but many different ways of organizing socialist production and distribution should be experimented on small scale by democratic bodies.

*more productive

I see. Thanks. Marxist economics is still somewhat baffling to me.

This all sounds significantly more inefficient than free market socialism, or some sort of decentralized mixed economy.

Define inefficient.

I pay you, you work, you don't like the paycheck then fuck off.

Resources will be misallocated, the denizens still don't have control of their labour and are essentially doing the exact work Marx said to abolish. Central planning is moronic.

Another term for shitty planning?
Marx was for labour vouchers. Measuring labour time is important. Labour time input will continue to play a big role in the pricing of consumer items. People will obtain these with labour vouchers.


The value of his labor is likewise evaluated based on the labor time the job SHOULD have taken rather than the labor time it actually took due to known inefficient practice.
And the difference here between capitalism and socialist central planning is not the price of the product, but that workers aren't rewarded or punished in any way because of the different quality of equipment they have to work with.

I think OP was reffering to the Calculation Problem. Does anybody have a good response to that?

What does this "problem" consist in?

It is an argument against central planning. Essentially, it claims that in a planned economy, you cant achieve that level of resource alocation you can in a market economy, which to Mises makes it so socialism is impossible, though some just think it makes it ineffective.
Wikipedia defines it like this:

He seems to confuse markets with supply and demand.

He also seems to misunderstand the "central" in "central planning".

An army, for example, is centrally planned; which doesn't a low-rank officer cannot take many decisions.

so how do we calculate how long a job should take?

We don't.

Then how do we work out what the value of someone's labour is?

Through the market.

lyl

I assumed the user was talking about capitalism.

In communism we obviously do not work out what the value of someone's labour is.

I was talking about communism

Then how is society co-ordinated and exchange done?

No exchange is done. As for coordination, how is it related to value?

I don't even know what you two are talking about any more.


We do not need to predict how long a job will take. We need only take the social average of work that is being done.

what the fuck does that mean

yeah, that's where snlt comes in and determines the price of commodities based on their value (the average labor it takes to produce). This is assuming supply and demand are in equilibrium.

The LTV only applies to capitalist exchange, you baka.

Go away Stalin.

I thought that we were calculating how long we should expect a particular job to take.

Then how the fuck do we calculate compensation in socialism?

Develop standards for valuing the time and effort that needs to go into every task and job and also the availability of qualified workers to do each job and compensate fairly for their time and effort.

No more McDonalds workers who have a endless stream of customers get paid less than a waiter or a cashier at a sleepy upscale restaurant.

Like how capitalism is supposed to do with supply and demand but never does.

You could have a much higher mobility of labor paying people more for the same job where there's an increased demand and also repopulate some of America's most decayed major cities, Detroit, Baltimore, etc.

We don't.

So what do people get for their labour?

Food, a house, maybe a bed. Maybe.
But in all seriousness, supply and demand as systems for value determination are not bad in themselves. They are always exploited though, artificial scarcity can be used to decrease supply which raises the price, and advertisements are used to raise demand, all to levels that are not necessarily more optimal, as they may lead to people who can't access goods that could have been there or overconsumption of things that people didn't need (artificial demand?)
Things will have to be done to supply needs. So you'd have to represent those needs. This means that the form "money" takes has to become different in itself
I don't know where I wanted to go with this anymore. But here's my ideas.

Their share of the total product of society's labour.