Guys I made a really nice simulation/visualization about the labor theory of value : chapotraphouse

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Can you explain how you are calculating the wages paid out to workers? In words you state:

c. It is assumed that consumers are not going into debt, which means the total money they spend on net consumption comes from the wages (or dividends) paid by industry. Wages are paid by each industry proportionally to their gross labor usage

And in the code you have:

` %Industry to consumer sales (assuming consumers save/lose nothing)

S = o.*P; %Sales to consumers

Y = sum(S); %Total consumer spending = wages paid out

W = L.*Y; %Wages paid out vector by industry

I have a couple of questions about this, but I still start with the calculation of Y (the answer may clarify my remaining questions).

You start with S = o.*P; %Sales to consumers where you are performing an element-wise multiplication of a n x 1 vector of net-products by a n x mag array of prices.

Working under the assumption that the net product is the net consumption of workers, i.e. n = c (also, don’t worry about using a standard notation - there isn’t really much of one. I am using a mix of Ian Wright’s, Pasinetti’s and my own sans-shrug ) the line S = o.*P; is calculating the below, correct?

Each of these elements, s~i~ = p~i~ c~i~ is the part of sector i’s revenue which it receives from its sales to consumers. (It isn’t the total revenue of the sector, though. That is given earlier by R~i~ = p~i~ q~i~).

Then you are summing along each column (you mentioned that MatLab’s sum function sum’s matrices down the column). For a single instantiation of a price vector, this is results in

Y = p~1~c~1~ + p~2~c~2~ + … = p c

which gives us a global wage bill, i.e. the total expenditure of the working class for the economy. This is an aggregated quantity over the entire economy.

Y is a row-vector, though, in your code since you are testing multiple prices - mag of them in fact. if I have the correct understanding, your Y vector is

Y = [Y^(1)^ Y^(2)^ … Y^(mag)^ ]

where I am using superscripts to designate distinct price instantiations.

But I think I must be misunderstanding something, because if the above is true, then I am not certain how the line

W = L.*Y; %Wages paid out vector by industry

Works out because you couldn’t element-wise multiply a n x 1 array L with a 1 x mag array Y.

My understanding is that your L vector is a n x 1 array of normalized labor-times for each sector.

L = O.*l;

L = L/sum(L); %Normalising gross labor use

So I need your help in understanding the calculation here.

I have more questions, but I will save them for later. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this!

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Working under the assumption that the net product is the net consumption of workers, i.e. n = c (also, don’t worry about using a standard notation - there isn’t really much of one. I am using a mix of Ian Wright’s, Pasinetti’s and my own ) the line S = o.*P; is calculating the below, correct?

Yup, 100% correct

Works out because you couldn’t element-wise multiply a n x 1 array L with a 1 x mag array Y.

This is indeed a valid operation in Matlab, also equivalent to L*Y (I could have clearer here)

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this!

No problem

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Okay great! This answers my next questions

So you calculate an average wage-rate (price per labor hour)

w=pc/L

and pay out to each worker sector i their eage using this wage-rate

wL~i~

Now we have a price equation that we can represent as

p = wl + pA + π

where the profit of each sector i I'm defining as Profit~i~=π~i~q~i~. I.e. π~i~ is a profit per gross output of a sector.

The above is in a style that is close (but not completelt identical) to a Sraffa-Pasinetti framework. But setting it up that way can allow you to compare with the Sraffian framework that you may find in the literature. In this framework, it is assumed that due to competition of capitals, an equilization of profit rates emerges. A single profit rate r emerges. So π becomes written in terms of the rate of profit, π= r pA, or it is sometimes defined as r (w l + pA) which is more in line with how the classical political economists such as Marx defined the rate of profit.

Also, if we assume the capitalists take their profits and spend it all on commodities such as luxury items, then we will need to introduce a capitalist consumption vector c^K^ and add it to the worker consumption so it is included in the net product. This will increase the gross product, and also increase the labor that workers must provide (i.e. now workers must perform surplus labor to create commodities for capitalists). Ian Wright's contribution is finding a measure of value which incorpotes that surplus labor and is proportional to the price. It is a measure of total labor embodied in a unit of workers' consumed product.

For the model in this post, there is no assumption of equal profit rates, no structual mechansim for enforcing equalizafion of r, so the profit is simply a residual.

If ever interested more in any of the above I'd always be down to talk. I find it fun!

Here are some extra tidbits about the equation. You may or may not find this worthwhile for the purposes of the simulation.

Again, the equation you have is

p = wl + pA + π

We can rewrite it as

p = wv + π(I-A)^-1^

This tells you the difference between the price and the standard labor value in terms of your residual.

Another alternative way to view the original equation is purely in terms of quantity flows, if we note that w=pc/L, then the term wl can be written as

wl = p [(cl) (1/L)]

The term in brackets, [(cl) (1/L)], is actually a consumption matrix, C^(W)^, for the working class. Recall c is a column vector while l is a row vector. It is like the workers' consumption analog to the industrial sectors' input output matrix A.

Element i,j of A tells us how much of product i the sector j requires to produce one unit of gross output in j.

Similarly, element i,j of C^(W)^ tells us how much of product i workers in sector j consume per unit of gross output in sector j.

Some interesting properties of C^(W)^

C^(W)^q = c^(W)^ (for the workers)

pC^(W)^ = wl

So if C^(W)^ is known data, or constructed by a model, you can write the equation

p = wl + pA + π

as

p = pC^(W)^ + pA + π

which can be rewritten as

p = π (I - A^(+)^)^-1^

where A^(+)^ = A + C^(W)^

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago

which can be rewritten as ...

The very last part of your comment is very interesting. At some point in my coding, I literally did randomly generate prices using that exact same equation. The vector pi was randomly generated (and so was A+). I didn't use that pricing generation strategy because it caused the deviation of the prices to clump around the average for large sector numbers. But, that was my incomplete model. I think I can try and see how my finished model reacts to these prices.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For the model in this post, there is no assumption of equal profit rates, no structual mechansim for enforcing equalizafion of r, so the profit is simply a residual.

Not exactly. It's more so that in this model, there is no class other than the working class. There is also no mechanism for profit rate equalization because this model doesn't have time steps. The only purpose of the model is to investigate the relationship between prices and economic stability.

I do have a model that I have just about finished coding that incorporates the idea of time, movement, wage rates and external trade. The post for that is in the works.

Maybe the third model in the series model will have profits and a capitalist class in it. The second version is still a massive upgrade, so I want to release it first.

Profit equalization is also something I don't plan on assuming. The agents in my 3rd model will try to maximize profits, and maybe profit equalization might emerge.

Although, the sectors in the 2nd model do hire more workers when the sector's income is high, which is something like a profit maximization behaviour. Of course, the sectors in my 2nd model can't choose prices (it wouldn't make sense, since all gross outputs are fully sold), so it's not true profit maximization behavior. The sectors in my models (so far) are also not individual firms, which limits their agency as agents.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah and I noticed that the profits don't go toward any class consumption. But I realize that this is fine as it is the scope of this first model - I just wanted to clarify the assumptions that a Sraffian model uses. And I agree, that in computational models one shouldn't assume it - one checks if they emerge. That's the more fascination approach. It would be interesting to see if a future model generates an equalization of profit rates and/or equalization of wage rates if the wage rate is an endogenous variable determined by a labor market.

I have models that I would like to share as well. I don't know if I should post them here or on lemmygrad (a place I don't go to often enough). If you have any suggestions for a community let me know.

In the meantime thanks for the great discussion! I don't have more questions at the moment but I'm looking forward to updates!

Thanks again! And best of luck in your future projects cyber-lenin rat-salute-2

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago

I don't know if I should post them here or on lemmygrad (a place I don't go to often enough). If you have any suggestions for a community let me know.

Posting it on the free chat should be fine. Stuff gets traction there. Also, you could try posting in Chapo then linking to the lemmygrad. I think that could boost the engagement numbers and get lots of community interaction.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago

Thanks for your comments and clarifications! I'll read them and get back to you. The use of the 1000 price vectors within each iteration, and the explanation of some MatLab code helps

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I have some comments, questions, and possible suggestions. I think this is really great, and simulations are incredibly fun and I love digging into them. Some of my questions are because I know Python but not MatLab, so I may need to check I understand what your code is doing. Other comments may be due to differences in how quantities are calculated (particularly how the labor-value and the costs were calculated), and your final comparison of aggregated quantities instead of sector quantities. Keep in mind that I don’t mean any comment to sound aggressive, and it is possible that I am misunderstanding the code or the concept that the calculation represents.

Because I don’t know MatLab well, I’m going to go through the sections of the code and we can confirm my understanding of each part.

1.) You make N economic simulations. For each iterative economic simulation, i, you:

2.) First, generate a random net product vector n for the global economy (you call it o in the simulation).

3.) Then you randomly generate an input output table A.

Warning: not every randomly generated input output table is productive, i.e. there is no guarantee that the inverse of I-A exists, or that if it does exist then you will have an economically feasible gross product. The Hawkins-Simons condition (which is an economic application of the Perron-Frobenius theorem) gives us the mathematical conditions for ensuring that an input output matrix A is economically feasible.
- Essentially for A to be productive, (I-A)^-1^ must exist and (I-A)^-1^ n must result in a non-negative vector (you can’t have a requirement of negative gross production) which means (I-A)^-1^ must also be non-negative. -- To confirm that A is productive. You can check if the largest eigenvalue of A. If it is a positive value that is less than one then by the Hawkins-Simon theorem it will be productive. -- Alternatively, you could just randomly generate the input output matrix A and then confirm that (I-A)^-1^ exists and is non-negative. If not, regenerate A and test again. -- I am also sure that MatLab would give an error if the matrix inverse does not exist, but it won’t give an error if the resulting gross product is not non-negative.

4.) Then you calculate the gross product vector q, or as you call it O. This is calculated via q = (I-A)^-1^ n. It took me a while to realize that “\” is MatLab’s way of doing a matrix inverse followed by a multiplication. So A \ b is MatLab’s way of calculating A^-1^b, correct?

5.) You calculate the gross labor use as L=l q. This is element wise multiplication, or equivalently, the dot product. I wasn’t sure why you normalized the net product and the gross labor, though.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I added in the explict checks. It turns out, a huge number of the matrices being produced were non-productive. Instead of trying to keep generating matrices, I made a different fix (which makes the technical matrices more realistic, so win-win)

I made it so that the average number of entries in each row of the technical matrix is (2*n)^0.5

This means that as the economy grows larger, the matrices grow sparser. This makes productive matrices much more likely (at which point, I just have a check which makes it so that non-productive matrices are regenerated).

Curiously, this change doesn't have that big of an effect on the outcome. I've verified. The model simply handles negative net production and treats it like purchasing commodities from the external market (so something like imports). Still, I have removed it for now.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

6.) Calculating the LTV “prices” is the part that confuses me the most and I have a few comments and questions on

You calculate this by first calculating (I-A)^-1^, and then perform an element-wise multiplication (this is what “.*” does in MatLab, correct?) by the labor coefficient vector l. Then you sum this together.
I am confused by this calculation as the standard equation for calculating labor values is v = v A + l = l (I-A)^-1^. Note that l is a 1 x n row vector and so v is also a row (or left) vector. Alternatively, you could calculate with column vectors and the transpose of the inverse, i.e. v = ((I-A)^-1^)^T^ l.

This gives you the amount of labor required in a vertically integrated subsystem to produce one unit net product. This is using Sraffa and Pasinetti’s work to give a more concrete theoretical understanding of what a labor-value is. It is like a total labor input per unit net product. By that definition, though, it isn’t meaningful to sum up these elements as they don’t have the same units. You would first have to multiply v by some commodity-quantity, typically the net product. Note that v n = L, this provides an alternative way to “dividing up” the economy’s social labor.

This is similar to how you couldn’t actually meaningful sum up the elements of a price vector, p. A price has the units of money per unit commodity, and each commodity would hence have a different price unit. You would first have to multiply each price by the quantity of commodities that one is purchasing in order to convert it to a common unit (money) and then you could add it up. The same logic works for the standard definition of the labor value vector.
Another reason to not sum the value vector is that it would be useful to compare each element of the value vector, i.e. each commodity’s labor value, to the emergent price in the market. But, this would require you to add a mechanism where each firm can adjust prices and I don’t believe that has been added into the model yet. At the moment you are comparing aggregate quantities, i.e. the sum of prices with the sum of values-per-commodity (which I am not confident is meaningful in your present calculation), but an improvement could be to compare each sector’s emergent price (the price required for reproduction) with the sector’s labor value. In another post I have some papers where you can read how Ian Wright’s simulations handle the price adjustment and the reallocation of labor. This can be one possible future direction to head toward. I.e. you can inspect the ratio of p~i~ / v~i~ for each sector i.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

uh, I haven't really read staffa or anything, but my approach for computing ltv prices was

Assume 1 unit of net output for a commodity

Calculate how much gross production would required for each sector in that case

Element wise multiply this with direct labor use to get needed labor from each sector

Add up all of the labors from all the sectors.

In formal terms, for sector 1

(I-A)^-1 * [1;0] = g = Gross product for 1 unit of sector 1

Then

sum(g.*l)

The "(eye(n)-A)\eye(n))" computes "g" for every sector at once (the output is [g1 g2 g3 g4 ...])

I believe this is equivalent to the equation you have also provided, except your equation involves fewer steps.

Also, just as a context thing, matlab, for some reason sums matrices down columns by default. So the output the ltv prices equation is a row vector of the summed labors (which I transpose using the apostrophe symbol ')

Indeed I am pretty sure that my code actually is using prices and values for each sector separately, otherwise the code should be giving me an error regarding the dimensionality of the code.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hello again, I'm going through your code and taking some notes so I am getting back to you in sections. I plan on putting everything in one post, but I thought I could comment on this particular point separately in the meantime. Also, apologies if I come across as if I am speaking down you. I recognize you are acquainted with these ideas and I'm trying to be clear to avoid any confusion for both of us and anyone else reading these comments!

The way that you calculated labor values here can work, as long as you are multiplying the labor coefficients across columns in a row when doing the element-wise multiplication. If done correctly, you are correct in that you are essentially calculating

v = v A + l = l (I - A)^-1^

which is the total labor required to produce a unit net product.

I have an example here to make my point:

Here is my labor coefficient vector, l
Define Leon as the Leontief inverse matrix (I-A)^-1^

MatLab trips me up with the \ operator, so I just take the inverse explicitly and define it as Leon to avoid any confusion.

This will be a little different form your approach where you are taking Leon and then matrix-multiplying by unit vectors (a matrix of unit vectors i.e. I) to perform the sum. Here, I make the sum more explicit to step through the calculation.

Calculate the total labor it takes to produce a unit of net output, i.e. a (standard) labor-value.

Since I am not familiar with MatLab I am not claiming you are doing this the correct or incorrect way - you can determine this since you know MatLab better than I do - but I wanted to show you a possible wrong way to calculate v depending on how you do the element-wise multiplication.

Incorrect Way If the labor coefficient value l~i~ is multiplied to the values in the i-th column of the Leon matrix and you sum the values of each column (sum across rows for column i) as shown below:

Then you will be getting a vector that doesn't correctly trace the labor inputs of each sector.

You would be accidentally calculating

(I - A)^-1^ l

i.e. you would be defining v~i~ as Leon~i,1~ l~1~ + Leon~i,2~ l~2~ + ...

instead of correctly calculating it as

Correct Way

l (I - A)^-1^

i.e. v~i~ = l~1~Leon~1,i~ + l~2~ Leon~2,i~+ ...

The order of the subscripts helps keep this straight, since the embodied labor in net product i is the sum of labor going from sector 1 to sector i plus labor going from sector 2 to sector i plus ..., etc.

As long as your method is doing the element-wise multiplication correctly then it will work. Here are the examples I have continued:

Here, as long as the first element of l is being multiplied to the first row of Leon, and the second element of l by the second row of Leon and etc. then when you sum the columns

you get the correct calculation of the labor value, which the above shows.

My apologies for the earlier misunderstanding. I see that you are not aggregating

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Matlab element wise multiplication indeed works in the correct way that you described.

sum(Leon.*l)

is equivalent to

l*Leon

which is why MatLab's "sum" function by default sums down columns rather than by rows. The sum(Leon.*l) notation keeps things explicit (helps me in coding consistently), but the MatLab compiler knows how to optimize these things.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks for the response! Hopefully I'm not overloading you with questions - this is helping me understanding MatLab and answering some other questions I had. I've asked another question too re. the wages for whenever you have the time.

Thanks again!

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago (2 children)

7.) Then you have a vector of randomized prices. This is an n x 1000 table, though. I am confused why there is an extra 1000 here, when the loop itself will create 1000 instances of the economy. I may be misunderstanding the intention of this step so any clarification can help.

8.) You then calculate the costs, the sales to consumers, the total wages paid out, and the net income (I am also confused why the net income is normalized)? Some of the cost calculations confuse me, so I will discuss my understanding of calculating cost and we can also check if we are converging on our understanding: Sector i will spend the following amount of money on their means of production per unit product:

unit cost~i~ = p~1~ a_~1,i~ + p~2~a_~2,i~ + …

This is the amount of money that sector i must shell out to all other sectors in order to built a unit quantity. You can think of it as the row vector of prices multiplied by the i-th column in the input-output matrix A.

This unit cost for each sector can be expressed via matrix algebra as

unit cost = p A where p is a n x 1 row vector of prices

This gives you a row vector of each sector’s unit cost.

Alternatively, you can calculate this as unit cost = A^T^ p where p is a column vector. I just prefer to use column vectors for physical quantity vectors, and row vectors for prices, labor coefficients, and values. It makes the math easier to write, and you avoid transposing. It also hints at a duality present in the system.

Since this is a unit cost, we can calculate the total cost of production for sector i as

cost~i~ = unit cost~i~ x q~i~ = (p~1~ a~1,i~ + p~2~a~2,i~ + …) q~i~

You can do this for all sectors by first calculating the unit cost vector above, so you can do p A using matrix multiplication, then you can convert these unit costs to real costs by element-wise multiplication with q. This will give you each sector’s individual costs for means of production.

If you wanted aggregate costs for the whole economy though, then you can do the matrix multiplication of p A q, but I would suggest moving from an aggregate to a sector-specific model so you can test the differences between sector prices and sector labor values. I think that would be very interesting!

The money that each sector receives would then be the element-wise multiplication of p~i~ q~i~. If you wanted an aggregate quantity across all sectors, this would be the p q - you have already calculated this as R.

Then you also need to include the wage payments for each sector. Each sector pays there workers w l~i~ q~i~ = w L~i~. In the aggregate if workers are spending all of their wage and they are the only consumers of the net product, then w L = p n. But if you wanted to find how much each sector was spending for their wages, then you have to disaggregate this. You could Introduce the wage as a new parameter. Then the total wage spend by each sector is w l~i~ q~i~ = w L~i~

Divide the working class into sectors, just as the industry is divided, and note that the i-th working class consumes a proportion of L~i~/L n of the net product. Then, by conservation of the worker’s wages with their expenditure, note that wage spent by each sector is then p~i~ n~i~ L~i~/L.

With that, you can then find the net income as you have. And perhaps this is what you’ve done, but just in an aggregate way. As I mentioned, MatLab code is a little difficult for me to understand. And also, I think disaggregating this can be a good next step!

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago

the 1000 different prices are there to see what happens to the reproduction condition with 1000 different prices. I am not directly calculating reproduction prices for each economy. I am just letting random guesses show me what happens to the reproduction condition at various price points.
The net income being normalised was there just to improve the visualisation. I have run the code with all sorts of parameters with and without the normalisation, and it is difficult to decide which is more useful for gaining insight.

I've tried generating economies with upto 100 sectors (my poor laptop), but right now, I am facing a different problem I am trying to solve (with more and more sectors, my current random price generation strategy rarely ever produces prices close to LTV. Law of large numbers and all).

unit cost = A^T p

This is what I have done in C (except I also multiplied by gross output yo get total costs per sector)

If you wanted an aggregate quantity across all sectors, this would be the p q - you have already calculated this as R.

R is a vector denoting the revenue by sector. I think part of your misunderstanding might be from MatLab's element-wise multiplication function, whose output can be difficult to understand.

O is a n long coming vector, P is a n long column vector, when element wise multiplied, the output is also a n long column vector.

And I do suppose that using standard notation (which I have never seen before tbh) would probably help greatly.

And perhaps this is what you’ve done, but just in an aggregate way.

thonk-cri my shitty code is causing people to think I aggregated everything even though everything is disagregated.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago (2 children)

9.) The sector income then acts as a proxy for reproducibility. If the income is negative, then the sector is not sustainable and the prices must be updated. A future direction can be to have some dynamic model where each sector can adjust its prices if it is finding that the income is negative. A problem though that you will have to address if you do move in this direction is you will have to have a mechanism for modeling prices in a semi-realistic fashion and address appropriate labor reallocation.

If a sector’s income is very high then perhaps it is because the prices are very high. But the prices won’t be high in a real market economy if the supply of the product is also very high, as competition would result in competitive firms within the sector lowering prices for market advantage. A high supply would result in a downward pressure on prices. This downward pressure causes the income to lower over time, and firms would start to move out of this sector and labor will be reallocated to other sectors. This also occurs in reverse for sectors with a high demand but low supply. This mechanism is important for the operation of the law of value.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

To test Wright's non-standard value you'll need to introduce an exploiting class. For the purpose of the simulation you would have to add some population that consumes but does not contribute labor to production. You can have separate consumption vectors for the working class and the exploiting class. The net product n would then be sum of the worker's and the exploiter's consumption, n = c^W^ + c^K^. Start with the exploiting class consumption = 0, and you can slowly increase it to check the impact it has on prices.

For a micro model which with no exploitation and is simple commodity production you can find his paper The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy. For a different micro model with exploitation (but abstracts away from different commodities and input output tables) you can check out his Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics or his The Social Architecture of Capitalism, both papers have similar simulations. But value isn't discussed in the last two papers.

For a macro model, with the emergence of value and prices corresponding to values, you can check out Convergence to Natural Prices in Simple Production for simple commodity production with no exploitation and Classical Macrodynamics and the Labor Theory of Value for a macro model with exploitation.

Also, for a theoretical discussion of the work you can either check out his thesis, The Law of Value or specific papers such as a discussion paper where he discusses his non-standard value Nonstandard Labor Values, or a more detailed paper Marx's Transformation Problem and Pasinetti's Vertically Integrated Subsystems

I find this field fascinating and I love simulations. Hopefully I can share something of my own one day. So I'd like to congratulate you, and also love to hear about any updates!

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago

All of those sound interesting, I will check them out.

also love to hear about any updates!

I would love to share them. Hopefully I have something good by the end of the week.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I am very well aware that the dynamism is important for the law of value. I have tried making simulations of micro actors in the past to simulate commodity exchange, but those tended to become computationally intensive beyond what my cheap laptop could handle. (Either that, or trying model various effects to make it more accurate would start becoming like a full time job, forcing me to focus on my actual studies instead. )

This simulation is intended only to model a single time step (for now, adding more time steps comes in once I perfect the simulation for a single time step).

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago

I was in that same boat with my micro models. It got to where I felt like I had to add X, but to add X properly it felt like I also needed to handle Y, and so on and so on. So I get the struggle! I can have a problem of not knowing when and how to set the level of abstraction and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I have so many scrap projects that stall out because of this. And proletariat science unfortunately has to deal with the fact that we have other jobs that take away our time.

I will give it another look now that I understand what you were doing with the 1000 prices and that you did disaggregate. It isn't bad code, it just isn't my first language!

Don't know when I will get back, but I hope do it soon as I genuinely love this sort of stuff!

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

correct
correct
I was under the impression that since matlab's "rand" generates values between 0 and 1, all of the technical matrices should be automatically productive, but you are correct. I should add explicit checks
yes
I normalise the net product so that different economies are more comparable to one another. I am interested in the ratio of output between 2 industries, and not the scale of overall production

I normalise the gross labor use because that variable should actually be "share of workforce employed". The name is a relic from my previous attempt at the code where I had tried to incorporate the population into the sim. I seem to have forgotten to change the name.

Matlab's elementwise multiplication is not a dot product

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I have some comments, questions, and possible suggestions.

Exactly what I'm looking for :)

I'm not exactly a mathematician, so I had intended the simulation to more so be a learning excercise. Feedback is appreciated. I'm going to take a look at your comments once I am done sleeping 😴

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago

Looking forward to any discussion. And like I said, I may be misunderstanding some things!

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Hey this is awesome I've done some rebuilding of Ian Wright's simulations in Python. I'd love to share ideas and approaches and compare. He has his own idea as to how the transformation problem gets solved and the simulations built seem to support it (at least that it's consistent)

There are also two approaches of these simulations

1.) Is a macro approach. You simulate each sector as it's own node or "aggregate firm" and let the prices adjust by some macro economic function. You could test out different functions.

2.) There is the micro approach. Less has been done here, but it is definitely the more fun approach. You model each firm and/or individual (each agent) and let them set their prices, activity levels (how much they produce), etc.

In both simulations, you let the agents, whether it be a aggregated sector representing many firms in the macro approach or a individual firm in the micro approach, interact and change their own states as well depending on how much money they make. You need some mechanism of "decision making". Either dynamical equations, generative or stochastic actions, or more advanced things like Q learning agents (Ive used decentralized deep Q learning agents but it gets computationally intensive and isn't scalable to a large micro model. And many "dumb" agents are likely superior and sufficient to intensive "smart" agents for micro models)

The two types of models have different types of economic systems they are simulating, but in each simulation the appropriate activity levels are found (the agents essentially solve q = (I-A)^-1 for the global economy) and the prices correlate to labor values. In the macro models Wright shows the prices converging to the super vertically integrated labor values which he claims are the appropriate measure of value which correspond with price.

Essentially, the indirect value that goes into producing luxury commodities, which is what the profits in the second term of p=w l + r p A + p A get realized as, should be included in a measurement of value to be commensurate with price. If one wants to discuss the technical requirements of production then the standard labor values v are to be used. If one wants to know the social requirements of production due to exploitation and have a measure of value that also relates to the price structure, then you can use Wright's non-standard value measure.

Seeing if you can confirm or reject that work would be an interesting direction to take this in

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 6 days ago

My simulation model was built with scalability in mind, so I should be able to test Ian Wright's pricing strategy.

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is cool. Have you read any of the people who have done work on LTV and input-output analysis (or econophysics) type stuff? I feel like you'd dig it, it's very data based.

Like he sucks as a person, but I feel like Paul Cockshott would take a look at this if you sent it to him.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I learnt it from the guy in the first place. But yes, that's a great idea. I'll see if I can contact him.

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

That makes sense. There is also the econophysics discord. Nicolas Villarreal may also be interested, he does some simulation type stuff for profit rates.

You may also like some of these. I've only read one or two, but have been collecting them.

Cheng, Han, and Minqi Li. “Do Labor Values Explain Chinese Prices? Evidence from China’s Input-Output Tables, 1990–2012.” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 52, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 115–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613419849674.

Diquattro, Arthur. “The Labor Theory of Value and Simple Commodity Production.” Science & Society, vol. 71, no. 4, 2007, pp. 455–83, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40404443.

Flamant, Christian. “The Labor Theory of Value and the Problem of Joint Production : The Failure of Sraffa’s Theory and Morishima’s Misconception.” World Review of Political Economy, vol. 14, Apr. 2023, pp. 63–98, https://doi.org/10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.14.1.0063.

Lee, Chai-on. “Marx’s Labour Theory of Value Revisited.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 17, no. 4, 1993, pp. 463–78, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23599796.

Li, Bangxi. “Marx’s Labor Theory of Value and Its Implications for Structural Problems in China’s Economy.” Economic and Political Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2014, pp. 139–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/20954816.2014.11673848.

Nikolaos, Chatzarakis, et al. “Does the Labour Theory of Value Explain Economic Growth? A Modern Classical View.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4133135.

Slack, Gregory. “Marx’s Argument for the Labor Theory of Value.” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 53, no. 1, Mar. 2021, pp. 143–56, https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613419895275.

Tsoulfidis, Lefteris, and Dimitris Paitaridis. “Chapter 8 On the Labor Theory of Value: Statistical Artefacts or Regularities?” Research in Political Economy, edited by Paul Zarembka, vol. 25, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2009, pp. 209–32, https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-7230(2009)0000025011.

Zachariah, Dave. Labour Value and Equalisation of Proﬁt Rates: A Multi-Country Study.

All are likely on libgen, and the last one I think you can find on his website.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Imma quickly bookmark all these nice looking sources.

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

bean

If you find anything interesting on LTV pls share too!

[–] SockOlm@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I don't have a Lemmygrad account, yet sicko-wistful so I'll post this here: I was wondering what curve describes the edge between the dark area and the light area and from just trying out different stuff tan(x) seems to be the closest (though I'm not 100% sure) https://www.desmos.com/calculator/4vdslt4lz8

edit: new link

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You might be on to something, although I expect the curve to have something to do with logarithms as well (since it's on a log scale). Or it might be some really weird function.

Also, you can post images onto desmos?!

[–] SockOlm@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

To get the same shape in logarithmic scale it would be tan(log(x)) - but desmos can't display images when logarithmic scale is active.

Also, you can post images onto desmos?!

yup :D it's very fun to just chose an image and just make outlines from functions

[–] adultswim_antifa@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It might be a logistics function. They sort of model exponential growth and saturation.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/iqdyqrghtx This is going left/right instead of up/down.

[–] SockOlm@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

yeah, this one makes much more sense in context

[–] Dessa@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have no idea what is going on

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

Me neither. I'm just going about the motions of life.

catgirl-flop