Re:The Demoralization is just Beginning
by janalsncm on Thursday March 06, 2025 @09:35PM
(#43286989)
I think my point is about an underlying quality of the toaster, the ability to make toast, which is independent of its cost in different places. The price of a product is complicated by many factors which are irrelevant to that underlying quality.
> an underlying quality of the toaster, the ability to make toast, which is independent of its cost in different places
and this is called intrinsic theory of value[0], which mostly has been superceded by other theories (such as the one in my post, which is the subjective theory of value[1]).
While the intrinsic theory of value isn't wrong per se, it is too naive, and "simple", such that this theory does not explain much when applied to real world scenarios.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value
but the seller doesn't care about that. The seller will attempt to extract the maximum price of a toaster.
It is because americans are more productive, that their maximum price for a toaster is 5x that of china; they can afford to pay 5x. So this is a measure of their utility - not the ability to toast. An american finds that the ability to toast to be worth 5x that a chinese would be willing to pay for toast.
If america was poorer, the seller would not be able to sell the toaster for 5x (and instead would have to lower their price to match the price their customers can afford, up to the minimum margin the seller could afford to cut to).