Superphysics
The Six Types of Exchangeable Effort
June 3, 2018 4 minutes • 762 words
Table of contents
The effort theory of value says that useful work or effort is the foundation of exchangeable value.
This is totally different from Economics and Mercantilism which uses money as the basis, through marginal pricing theory.
Since effort is very important, its definition becomes very important.
Supereconomics defines defines human effort, whether physical or mental, as ultimately being rooted in psychological or metaphysical toil and trouble.
- This is opposite of the labor theory of value from Karl Marx which is based on physical work.
Exchangeable Effort is the effort used with or on capital to create exchangeable value.
We classify this into six:
1-2. Persistence: Material and Immaterial Effort
This uses the 1st Law to assign value based on its persistence in Reality. It refers to the physicality of the end result:
- Material effort is that which produces a material thing.
Included here are manufacturing, processing, agriculture, processing, extraction, etc.
- Immaterial effort is that which produces a material thing.
This includes services, events, experiences, etc.
Examples are healthcare, education, entertainment, government.
In a concert:
- the effort of the singer, stage crew, organizers are the immaterial effort
- the tickets, souvenirs, recordings, and merchandies are the material effort
- an MP3 file of the concert is a material effort
- a stream of the concert is an immaterial effort
3-4. Skill: Skilled and Unskilled Effort
This uses the Second Law of Value to classify effort as skilled or unskilled, according to the relativistic real values of their outputs.
- Skilled Effort requires many years of training and education
Examples are:
- 3-star chefs
- Professional athletes or Olympians
- Engineers, Doctors, and Industrial farmers
- Unskilled Effort requires little training and education.
Examples are:
- Ordinary cooks in households and community eateries
- Amateur sportsmen
- Construction workers, caregivers, and small-scale farmers
Generally, a wealthy country will be able to support more skilled effort than unskilled ones.
For example, Olympic medals are a good metric that indicates national wealth because athletes are skilled effort, as compared to amateurs.
5-6. Creativity: Value-adding and Value-Maintaining
Lastly, we use the Fourth Law to classify effort as value-adding or value-maintaing.
- Creativity is the beginning of production
- Productivity is the end of production
Both creativity and productivity are measured through quality and quantity.
- Value-adding effort creates or adds new value.
Examples are:
- Manufacturers, farmers, miners, construction, utilities, recyclers, innovators, successful writers and scientific discoveries
- Value-maintaining effort maintains the value already created.
Adam Smith calls these unproductive labor. Examples are:
- Governments, Militaries, Security personnel, Reporters, Lawyers, Lawmakers, Finance and Insurance
It can be easily noticed how government workers are generally uncreative. This is because government is a system that involves routine work.
A wealthy country will have more value-adders than value-maintainers. This is why liberals often push for small governments.
A country can become poor if its maintainers turn into rent-seekers that cannibalize the value-adders:
| Phenomena | Examples |
|---|---|
| Military Dictatorship | Cuba, North Korea, Myanmar, and Venezuela |
| State Religion | Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Iran, and Aceh |
| Conservative Tradition | China under Mao, Tibet, and Vietnam |
These stifle the creation and increase of material wealth for the sake of some abstract ideology.
Value-maintaining military can be converted to value-adding if it used for conquest. This was done by the Roman Empire and European Colonization.
With this, we can classify any profession easily according to these 6 types of effort:
| Effort | Persistence | Skill | Creativity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nursing | Immaterial | Skilled | Maintaining |
| Banking and Finance | Immaterial | Skilled | Maintaining |
| Singers | Immaterial | Unskilled | Maintaining |
| Professional Athletes | Immaterial | Skilled | Maintaining |
| Cooks | Immaterial | Unskilled | Adding |
| Content writing | Immaterial | Unskilled | Adding |
| Manufacture of Microchips | Material | Skilled | Adding |
| Rice Farming | Material | Unskilled | Adding |
Supereconomics aims to:
- balance the immaterial and material efforts
- increase effort to become skilled
- increase the efficiency of value-maintaining effort so that more effort can go to value-creation or addition
This classification system allows our supereconomy to be automated in order to further reduce the value-maintaining effort. It can also make taxation much fairer.
A rich country can use its skilled labor to code the AI that can be used by poor countries to help them rise to wealth faster, bypassing the usual corrupt rent-seekers that made them poor in the first place.
