Geology Reference
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engineer, then you know Hookers Law, which is linear. And any lack of linearity
is the residue - the qualitative residue; the phenomenon involves a quality. This is
why we have so many different forms of measurability.
Antonio Valero: And what about value and cost?
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: That is an extremely complicated question you
have just asked. What do you think value is? You might think in terms of some-
thing that would make people generally happy, such as democracy, good schools,
good universities, good friends. These are things which have a value because we
want them. On the other hand, the question is commodity - either you work for
something or you pay for it. This means that sometimes you make a trade-off of
your own services for those of others. This you do in a market and this is the type
of value Marx speaks of, and also the Neo-classicists. But you will find that I am
criticising the people who see energy as a value. Let's say you take some caviar and
some potatoes and you calculate the energy in both of them. One piece of caviar
has 1,000 calories and the potatoes you could buy for the same price has an equal
number. Engels was the first to complain about this. Engels said, in 1877, that
there are people who have argued by measuring the physical force of work and then
established how much money this should fetch per hour. This is my criticism of Karl
Marx, who only attaches one value to labour and not to any kind of unskilled labour
- rudimentary labour, such as a fellow who carries heavy things around a harbour.
In the end, they say, you have to be able to measure the accumulated labour. That
sounds all right, but I ask - if you establish that one unit of Georgescu's skilled
labour is equal to twenty units of unskilled labour, that means the two are substi-
tutable, and my question is: how many unskilled workers would you need in order
to write Das Kapital? I would say that's better than Engels. It's a problem. There
are a couple of articles which show you just how absolute the principle is -how, if
you accept the principle from the beginning, what kind of absolute you arrive at in
the end. And this is worse than in Marx's case, where Marx was saying that labour
is substitutable, whereas these people say the same thing about energy. At least
Marx has a connection with people. Energy doesn't have this connection.
Antonio Valero: And what about purpose and e
ciency?
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: I don't know how you can establish the connection
between e
ciency and purpose, because purpose is something that precedes action
- a crime, for example, as the purpose of a criminal, or a dictator - it's not necessary
to have a connection between the one and the other. So purpose is a general concept
which is attached to something according to a group of people who recognise the
existence - and importance - of purpose. Like myself, like many others. Purpose
is a general thing and it's an aspect, an element, a part of any connected action.
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