system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
Labor theory of value is dumb, even rightoids fall into its “intuitive” grasp.

The reality is your labor is worth a market price that is mostly determined by the marginal value compared to an average replacement.

Like in sports, the people who bring in the most money are the players with the greatest impact which can’t be replaced easily. Patrick Mahomes will make 15x that of a backup quarterback like Andy Dalton, even though they played a similar number of games.

Is Mahomes 15x working harder? No, but teams are willing to pay 15x Andy Daltons salary for a player of Mahomes caliber.

The difference between an average CEO and a great CEO can mean billions of dollars, the same can’t be said for a typical worker, by definition.
gpt
We conservatives love to cite "the labor theory of value" as an easy dunk, but it's important that we actually understand what Marx is saying. Too often, we totally misunderstand it and make fools of ourselves, despite our best intentions.

When Marx talks about the labor theory of value, he starts by explaining that an item has different types of value. Among other things, a good coat has *utility value* (it can keep you warm on a cold day), *exchange value* (it can be bought or sold for a certain amount), and *labor value* (it requires a certain amount of labor to produce). The "labor theory of value" never claims (as we conservatives tend to think) that the value of an item is simply the labor required to produce it; it was never about appraising individual items. It claims that items *have* labor value, and that we should view the economy in terms of the movement of said value.

Obviously there's a lot more to it than that. It's not a theory that can be summed up in a single sentence. I'd recommend reading *Wage Labor and Capital* for a better understanding.