Ricardian economics

Any trained economist knows who Malthus is and Ricardo, but their ideas have long been discarded." And h- and you're saying or Fetter was arguing that, no, actually, you can still see, like, there's a through line in, in those...

You know, some of the, that Malthusian and Ricardian tradition is alive and well, even though ostensibly everyone knows there were errors with that, and we s- were supposed to have moved on, yet it's persisted.

Can you just elaborate a little bit on that? Fir- first of all, is that...

Did I get it right? Is that, is that what his-

Neither of these facts, however, necessarily detracts from the value of this older work of Marx's.

On the question of rent, after reviewing the Ricardian theory and the many objections which present themselves to that theory, Hyndman says, quote, "It seems, therefore, that a wider definition of the rent of land under capitalism is needed than that given by Ricardo, and the following is suggested.

Rent of land is that proportion of the total net revenue which is paid to the landlord for the use of plots of land after the average profit on the capital embarked in developing such land has been deducted." On the question of confiscating rent, he says it "would not affect the position of the working portion of the community unless the money so obtained were devoted to giving them more amusement to provide them with better surroundings and the like.

In fact, the attack upon competitive rents is merely a capitalist attack.

But it was only a discovery for Germany.

Marx shows how little there is of novelty in a similar application of the theory of Ricardo by Proudhon, who suffered from an equal imagination.

Quote, whoever is, no matter how little, acquainted with the movement of political economy in England cannot but know that nearly all the socialists of that country have at different times proposed the equalitarian, that is to say socialist, application of the Ricardian theory.

End quote.

I'm not even talking about the critique here.

When you actually look at what the, the theories of, in favor of free trade say, when you look at people say, "Okay, Ricardian comparative advantage is all you need to know on this subject.

It simply answers the complete question"-

Mm

...

when, as I've explained, Ricardian comparative advantage is true in a very narrow set of idealized circumstances, and it's a handy mathematical gadget for figuring out what your benefits from trade are in certain circumstances.

It is not, and interestingly was not intended to be, by David Ricardo, who invented this, he wrote as much, was not intended to be a complete model of the trading economy that applies under all circumstances.

That's the guy who invented it-

All you need to do is change that framework too, to say, okay, so this capital cannot be dumped in the US.

And if the capital can't be dumped in the US, then you start to move back towards a more genuinely Ricardian trading system, which we don't have now.

You don't have balanced trade between economies, which is done efficiently by comparative advantage at the margin.

You have it done geopolitically by countries that do and don't employ statecraft to say, we're going to maximize production of X, Y, Z, because when we control that, we control the world.

You know, we control rare earths.

We can turn off the taps on everyone all around the world on what they do or don't have.

That ain't Ricardian.

There are lots of words for it.

Marx mentions the English socialist with praise in The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847.

They, like him, tend to base their arguments upon a Ricardian theory of value, but they have not his scope or erudition or scientific breadth.

Among them may be mentioned Thomas Hodgkin, 1787 to 1869, originally an officer in the Navy, but dismissed for a pamphlet critical of the methods of naval discipline, author of Labor Defended Against the Claims of Capital, 1825, and other works.

William Thompson, 1785 through 1833, author of Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness, 1824, and Labor Rewarded, 1825.

And that wasn't just because of JLR, it was because of this constellation of producers around the country.

If you were being entirely kind of Ricardian, so just looking back at what David Ricardo said, and this is why, if you start by trying to kind of understand, okay, bread, the corn laws, where did this all begin? Then you kind of end up in this place where it's like, well, maybe we should just be focusing on our competencies.

Maybe we should just be focusing on kind of services in this country, on brain power, on expertise like that.

And then maybe we should just allow people to buy cars from wherever they are available cheapest.

Karl Menger marked a decisive transition within the Austrian tradition.

Much of British classical economics, especially in the Ricardian tradition, explained long-run exchange value primarily through labor and production costs.

Menger instead began with human needs and with the economizing individual's knowledge of, and command over, goods capable of satisfying those needs.

Value was not a substance stored inside an object.