Re: Goods without use-value???

[HANLY@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Bentham dealt with this problem somewhere in a critique of the view
that exchange value and use value were quite separate and that goods could have
exchange value, such as pet rocks, or diamonds (jewels), but no use value.
His reply was in terms of his own theory of utility that intrinsic value
=pleasure = utility. Pet rocks, and diamonds give people pleasure and it is
the pleasure that a good gives that makes people exchange. What is
misnamed use value should be called instrumental value. There are zoodles of
things we exchange that have no use but are simply enjoyed. He also pointed
out that anthing that has use value such as air or water will also have
exchange value should it become scarce and pointed out that bottled water was
sold in Paris I believe--indeed he was prophetic perhaps in that now clean
air is a scarce resource there is trading in pollution rights. (Of course the
rights are not given to the people polluted to sell but to the better corporate
citizens in the industry that does the polluting. You could no doubt arrange
this system for the reduction of gang muggings. If a gang does less than 10
muggings a day they are issued mugging permits to gangs that are less socially
responsible. OVer time you might reduce the allowable limit to 8 and thus use
the market as a marvelous system of reduction in crime ;-) )
  CHeers, Ken Hanly

P.S. I agree with much of what Justin had to say in his recent response.
The point about pursuing happiness according to one's own lights is that
it makes no mention of community or any other constraints.
 It is fine then that the person who makes
1,000 a year use that money as they see fit to seek happiness (according to
their lights) and right for the person who makes a million a year to do
likewise. Seeking happiness as one wishes is allowed as long as one does not
interfere with others similar pursuit.
 What is wrong is for others or government to interfere with this,
because in doing so they violate the rights of the individual. The
 statement is almost an axiom of
an individualist approach to social rights. What individuals see as their own
lights and the legitimate extent of their following these is partly a function
of the mode of production and so will come down to, within advanced capitalism,
 the marvelous society of atomistic consumers born to shop(the infinite
consumer) as described by
 Marcuse or brilliantly depicted in Veblen's sociological caricatures.
  Aren't limitless wants an assumption of capitalism? If
lacks do not exist they must be created? The pursuit of happiness according to
ones lights is everyone
maximizing their utility functions and in a perfectly free market the
Invisible Hand (of God of course, economists omit this part of the story)
will achieve this.
 Of course I assume Justin thinks that there is a sense in which
 people should be able to seek happiness in their own way.
I agree. We don't want the Great Gardener Stalin determining what sort
of music Shostakovich should write.
 But I was speaking of the ideological functions of such a statement
in present society.
  Cheers, Ken Hanly




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