Similarly in a society with much leisure time, games and recreational facilities become important, but in a subsistence economy in which people must work nearly continuously just to stay alive, such things may actually have negative value. The labor theory also ignores the importance of time and position. Oil in a desert is a potentially valuable resource, but oil in the local reservoir or in the middle of a farmer's field is a hazard. Perhaps the most grievous theoretical fault with the labor theory is that it ignores what economists call time preference . Time preference is the common strong preference for goods and services here and now, rather than later.
Present consumption is more valuable than future consumption.
For example, most workers prefer to be paid when their work is completed rather than when their products are sold which may be months later. For workers to be paid now, rather than later, someone must advance their wages, and clearly this service has a value. The final theoretical failure of the labor theory of value is the value-effort fallacy. It is folly to assume that all effort produces value. Every day each of us wastes time on fruitless efforts.