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Notes -
I view your example of different doctors similarly to "efficient machines" which I said this doesn't deal with well.
Indeed! However, you're looking to disprove it by coming up with comical definitions instead of looking for useful and insightful definitions, this is the opposite of productive (mathematical) reasoning. It's akin to throwing away a hammer because it's bad at turning screws. Sure, some communists would probably argue this steak is worth more because you burned 20 barrels of crude to cook it, but that's obviously just waste. The actual energy used to do the thing - that's a more useful lens. In context, you'd recursively consider all the energy used to get through the bureaucratic and credentialing requirements, to be better than others vying for spots etc. and those failed people who invested but didn't make the cut, the energy they invested is also included in the end (otherwise the supply of physicians would be higher and the price lower etc.) It's more useful to search for situations and problems where this tool is useful, leads to insights etc. so you can take it out of your toolbox for them. I find it helpful for macroeconomics and valuing commodity companies, as a measure of competitive of advantage etc.
I’m a little confused about what you mean by the “actual” energy used to do a thing. Energy is either used for some purpose or it is not. To rephrase what I think you are saying, it sounds like you are refining the energy theory of value to say that things should be valued by the “minimal reasonable” amount of energy used to produce the thing. This seems like a good refinement to me because then you can’t mess with the value of a thing by just making it while sitting in the cab of your idling F350. Is that what you meant?
I still think this is off base, though it does make it harder to trivially produce counter examples. It just seems obvious to me that some lower energy things are much higher value than high energy things. Immaterial services are the most obvious example, but I’ve already talked about that with the doctor example. You say doctors are like more efficient machines, so maybe you agree with me here? Another good example would be high fashion items. Before the “minimal reasonable” refinement you could maybe argue that actually flying the models and designers to the show circuit makes them high energy products, but the “minimal reasonable” refinement rules that argument out.
I do think an energy theory of value gestures at something interesting, but it just seems unable to handle large swaths of the modern economy. Are you actually proposing it as a bedrock principle for an overarching economic theory, or are you just saying it is an interesting idea and an improvement over the labor theory of value. I would agree with the later.
I wrote multiple times that I don't or it doesn't work. I literally started with:
I also wrote:
How is that not clear? Why do you think I'm proposing the opposite of what I write?
Yes. You obviously don't value a car at $20 million USD because someone got scammed or overpaid on purpose to create a hypothetical. It's value not price. It's just changing units.
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