The public airwaves and someone named R. L.

Economics is no doubt an important subject.

Rush Limbaugh expounded on it, yesterday. I heard the man, in the car, "alive," you might say, through the intermediary of our public airwaves, on which R. L. is expounding on topics of an economic nature. It's true; there are tapes.

The set-up is that his antipodal "other" the "Left" has a view and he, Limbaugh, has a view. This former thing-a-madjig or "idea" is rather poor (not culturally rich and complex like Limbaugh is) and R. L. happens, you see, to possess the other. In this view, as expounded, things under capitalism are valued not on their per se or material value but rather on how much they are worth to someone else. What he says he rejects is the view that the item or product is worth the labor imbedded in it, which is supposedly the view of the Left. What it is is actually Limbaugh's view of the Left, that's all. But hey folks, this one's reel gud.
Once he has gotten rid of the evil Leftist view, which was as far as I am able to understand, with my limited knowledge, a version of Marx's "labor theory of value" that overlooked the function of abstraction (which is a difficult topic perhaps, but it's there) he then proceeds -- clumsily and provisionally -- to float an incredible (but interesting because Limbaugh is relatively genuine, or honest) apparition of things -- an incredible version of reality.

Value now becomes valorized as trade value rather than real value, or rather, Marx's labor-oriented value, this because he applies on his own side the Marxist function of abstraction which is something he'd left out in his haste to get rid of the Marxists. The Limbaugh sort of kosher value now consists in "whatever someone will pay you for it." But it is infinitely stretchable, basically. This seems to be where Limbaugh landed. Because he then says that he might hire someone, which, he explains, is for something he does not have time for himself (since he is busy mis-quoting Marx and making gobs of dough) and he will pay this other partner, which is to say trader or trade partner or the other partner in trade relationships "say, $100,000." But the imprecision or stretchability of this concept is exactly the element of Marx that he'd just left out from Marx, that of abstraction. I think it is probably waht they call "alientated" labor. So Limbaugh re-iterates exactly what Marx said; but on his side.

Any product, in this world of Limbaugh's, can be valued at any level; that same task that he just paid $100,000 for might be worth, say, minimum wage to somebody else in some other position. "Or less!" That's what he said. That, he says, is why persons with the "salary" type of job cannot make more than say $50,000 generally speaking (probably not more than $250,000). Anything higher is going to be paid out by the "entrepreneurial" part of the world, which I would think is more or less like the idea world or creative world. The one Limbaugh occupies. I won't say "abstraction" again. It is all too obvious and easy. The slightly more abstract world is going to be "ideas." What is the creative world of ideas? I don't know, but this too, is right there in the evil Left. Marx always obsessed on Hegel as too much with the "Idea" and not enough with the "material." So, as said, the Limbaugh world is a new, supposedly better one, where value is infinitely expandable or indefinite. This is now acceptable, but as Mr. Limbaugh's idea. And to go to the "other" side, what the worth of things is not is that "other," enemy idea that value is based on the labor it takes to make the product --- or something. Something. Something those silly "Left" people believe.

No, value is infinitely expansive. Like a dirgible. Like R. L.'s belly. Like a Led Zeppelin. (And that, as we have shown already, is simply what Marx didsay.) So: a big Thank You to Rush, I guess.

But this creates quite an interesting universe, one in which slave labor on the African cacao plantations is fairly valued at, or "worth" the harming of the little slave children...because Hershy's or Godiva bars are "worth" 60 cents each (or whatever!) because, I reckin, that is what buyers are, Um, "willing" to pay. And so forth. How else do you value all those hundreds, and thousands, and hundreds of thousands (and millions) of sweatshop workers and plantation workers are not "worth" any price other than the parsimonious wages set on the international market because.... that's capitalism. But this is not capitalism, not at all. It unregulated and insane capitalism. That's the point, here.

Because..."that's capitalism"? "That's life," maybe? In this lovely, cigar-puffin' drug-addicted pot-bellied world, where 30,000 babies die every day. Tanks, Rush. Baby, you were great the other day, really.