7 Minutes
My opponent has just spent seven minutes making my case better than I could have imagined. Let me show you exactly how.
Whatever specific arguments my opponent has just made, they all follow the same pattern: they cannot function without smuggling in the very subjective valuations they claim to reject. Let me show you how this works systematically.
The labor theory of value cannot take a single step without borrowing from the subjective theory of value it pretends to oppose. Every attempt to make LTV work in practice requires Leo to secretly depend on individual preferences and market processes - the very things his theory claims to explain away.
But this pattern repeats with every argument LTV can possibly make:
"Labor Creates All Value" - Immediately faces the efficiency problem. If labor creates value, then 100 men with shovels create more value than 1 man with a diesel backhoe. The theory incentivizes waste and punishes innovation.
"Socially Necessary Labor Time" - This is supposed to be determined through market forces -- but how are the markets to determine their prices? With LTV? But we haven't resolved what the SNLT is yet. This leads to infinite regress, thus making it logically impossible. The alternative is that it requires subjective judgments about what society values, discovered through market behavior. Leo must use my theory to make his work.
"Use-Value vs Exchange-Value" - Admits subjective preferences (use-value) do most of the explanatory work while claiming some unobservable "exchange-value" follows different rules.
"Price-Labor Correlations" - Creates an unfalsifiable shield: when prices match labor, LTV is proven; when they don't, it's "use-value interference." Any evidence against gets dismissed, any evidence for gets claimed.
"Average Production Methods" - Requires market prices to calculate averages, which reflect individual choices - subjective valuations again.
"Innovation Benefits" - Can only explain technological progress by appealing to subjective judgments about what constitutes improvement.
The labor theory of value is magical thinking dressed up in economic terminology. It posits some mystical "labor essence" that gets transferred into objects, creating an invisible "exchange-value" that exists independently of what people actually want or are willing to pay.
Leo, as an atheist, you wouldn't accept "God works in mysterious ways" as an explanation for natural phenomena. Yet you're asking us to believe in an invisible economic force that works in mysterious ways - unobservable and unfalsifiable - while admitting that observable forces actually determine market behavior. You've created the God of economics: an unobservable power that supposedly controls everything while admitting that observable forces actually control everything.
Value is not an intrinsic property of objects waiting to be discovered through labor calculations. Value exists only in the minds of acting individuals who make choices about what they want and what they're willing to trade for it. A hole dug by one hundred men with spoons is not more valuable than the same hole dug by one man with a backhoe - despite containing one hundred times the labor.
This isn't merely an academic debate. The labor theory of value, if implemented, would incentivize inefficiency, punish innovation, and destroy the very market mechanisms that coordinate human action and improve our lives. It would create a system that rewards waste and penalizes the technological progress that makes civilization possible.
My opponent's theory is not wrong - it's worse than wrong. It's a parasitic pseudo-theory that cannot exist without secretly depending on the very subjective valuations it claims to reject. Every argument he makes, every qualification he adds, every escape hatch he creates proves that subjective valuation is inescapable.
The debate is already over. My opponent has spent his opening statement proving that my theory explains reality while his explains nothing. The only question remaining is whether he'll admit it.