Profit within Capitalism is a result of the exploitation of the workers

First I'll say that I got someone who seems well versed in this subject. It should make for an interesting debate for the audience if nothing else. --- Con is right that I did not post a definition of "exploitation" which would be because I am using the word to denote something slightly different than what one most people would assume. I preferred to explain what I mean in full in the introduction to my argument. Nevertheless, someone can get an encyclopedic entry for the theory of exploitation as I will argue for it, within Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org...). Nevertheless, I believe that my opponent's definition of exploitation as not "being in accordance with relative merit of significance" is also appropriate. In fact, perhaps it is more appropriate than what Con would expect as it shines the light directly into the main aspect of the exploitation problem: Namely that the worker's contribution to the production process has _the only_ significance. My opponent will try to argue that there is no way to assign a "fair value" on labour, but that is misdirection. We are not called to decide exactly how much the worker should receive per labour hour, but rather to show that whatever the full product will fetch _is_ the fair value of his labour. Adding a precise monetary value to his labour intensity/skill*time is not what is important. I will now proceed to refute the arguments my opponent has put forth as an explanation of profit. Unfortunately all three of these arguments seem simple but require an extensive refutation. I only hope my space is enough. 1. RE: Time Value of Money This is based on the Time Preference theory (1) which is attempts to put forth a descriptive theory on human psychology. Specifically, as Con put forth, an irrefutable "law of nature" that is built into all societies which use money (Only the ones which use money? Con does not deem to clarify). I will show how the Time Preference and by extension the Time Value of Money theories is both logically inconsistent and based on shaky assertions. First of all, the most glaring fault of the theory is its lack in scientific basis. As a descriptive theory (rather than a normative) we are justified to expect a scientific basis on it rather than an appeal to emotion as put forth in the "send me all your money" statement. In fact, this theory has no such thing. It is something that Austrian Economists would call an "a priori axiom", something which refutes you as soon as you try to argue against it. But just because something seems "self-evident" is not an argument for its existence. In fact, it is exactly because of the flaws in human thinking that we have developed the scientific method in order to take a seemingly "self-evident" hypothesis and make sure it does indeed stand. Unfortunately the Time Preference theory has never moved past the original Hypothesis stage. Most importantly, it lacks falsification, from which, as I will prove in my next argument, we can conclude that it does not stand. As it is, the axiomatic status (2) that is attempted to be assigned to Time Preference, ensures that as a scientifically proven theory (3), it remained stillborn. But what of logical consistency of the theory? Here's how one can refute it by the simple experiment of falsification. We can easily put forth the following argument: * We do have people putting more value in future money. This is the act of saving. Historically it has been quite common that people would hide wealth in some random location instead of using it immediately. It is very conceivable that someone would wish to store value in the future as a security for potential mishaps, so as to ensure that he has the _same wealth_ in the future. In fact, people have been known to actually be willing to pay a premium to ensure the security of their wealth for the future, in effect trading current wealth for _less_ future wealth. * If the time preference was true, we would not have people putting more value in the same future money than they do in current money. * The Preference theory has been falsified and thus is wrong. With these two faults I believe I have shown why argument 1 fails to account for profit. There are other criticisms against it of course which I will bring forward in case of further defence. Unfortunately I do not have space to counter the second part of the argument which relies on the "Waiting theory" of interest. It is indeed also relatively easy to counter but for now I will beg your pardon and I will link you instead to a detailed refutation instead: http://tinyurl.com... 2. RE: Assumption of Risk The argument from Risk is a far more known explanation for profit and Con has indeed stated it accurately. However the argument from Risk does not stand further than a very casual look. The Risk theory of profit relies on the concept of investment, the act of someone putting his money in a new enterprise and expecting a return if his choice was wise. However where all actions have a modicum of risk. An artisan building a new product has the risk of losing his time. A worker going to a new job has the risk that he will be fired soon after and stay unemployed. However from all the risk taking actions, Entrepreneurship is the only one which expects and _infinite return of investment_. Lets give the example of an entrepreneur using his funds to build a new factory. He now has the chance to sell it to people who wish to work in it or to use them as wage-labour. If he managed to sell it immediately, by the laws of Supply and Demand that Con certainly ascribes to, the factory would fetch its fair price. His "risk" of building it as a commodity would have been rewarded. However if the Entrepreneur prefers to take on the risk of running it, he suddenly gets to be rewarded, in the form of profit, theoretically forever. His reward in this case can be multiple times the cost he paid. This is further complicated because the theory of risk does not reject exploitation but simply justifies it. It doesn't claim that workers are not earning less than their fair value, but explains why this must be so. However there is no reason why entrepreneurial risk should get such a reward, compared to all other kinds of risk. Con needs to explain why the Return for entrepreneurial risk should be infinite rather than something sane. Would 2 times the cost of the investment be good? How about 10? How about 100? But in fact, nothing is enough for the Capitalist, no matter how much profit his investment returns and how many times the worker's exploitation pays it over.The workers will never own it as would any other buyer. 3. Re: Creative genius The Con here attempts to muddle the waters by assuming that the capitalist himself does productive labour as well. The act of actually developing a product is the labour that the capitalist has put forward and as I mentioned from the start, this deserves a reward. If the capitalist needs to add extra labour than what he himself can provide, then it follows that he would make more money by hiring it, otherwise he wouldn't. As such, I do not maintain that intellectual labour should not be rewarded. I claim that all labour should be rewarded equally. In fact what my opponent though calls "creative genius" is again unproven and in fact, quite disproved by reality, where we often see the managers and owners of the company have far less "creative genius" than their workers who at times sustain the company by their own creative genius. If profit is a reward for such "genius", then we would expect all capitalist to act like it. Unfortunately I am out of space so I will tackle the apologetics put forth in the end, in the next rounds. (1) http://tinyurl.com... (2) Mathematics - or Why Axioms cannot describe reality: http://tinyurl.com... (3) http://tinyurl.com...