Chapter IV Allocation of Resources

Section 1: Resource Distribution Patterns and Social Institutions

The distribution of resources is divided into distribution in nature and distribution in human society, and what we want to discuss here is the distribution of resources within the human system, that is, human society;

The allocation of resources in human society is mainly affected by two factors: people and mechanisms; The degree of development of human beings determines the allocation of their resources; The distribution system formed with the development of human beings themselves, that is, the mechanism of human allocation of resources; The relationship between them can be expressed as the fact that the development of human beings is a necessary prerequisite and prerequisite for the distribution mechanism in which they live; However, the distribution mechanism in which it is located plays a role in promoting and promoting the development of human beings themselves:

The degree of human development - > determines the distribution mechanism in which it is located;

The resource allocation mechanism in which it is located > promotes the development of human beings themselves;

The degree of development of human beings determines their social types (such as industrial owners, industrial personnel, etc.), and the proportion between human social types forms the distribution mechanism in which they are located. This distribution mechanism formed by the degree of development of human beings and the proportion of various social types of human beings can be summarized as: social formation; Different social formations exhibit different social systems; We can understand the corresponding social system through the different ways of distributing resources, and divide it into primitive society> feudal society> present society, > instant society; The first two are easier for us to understand, for the present society and the immediate society, we will explain, the present society is the social form dominated by the "market mechanism" in which we are currently located; It is important to note here that the "market mechanism" is not the same as the market itself, which refers to the place where resources are exchanged and distributed; The market mechanism refers to our current mechanism of allocating resources through the market by means of capital; The market itself can operate in a variety of ways, either in the form of capital or not; In place of this "market mechanism", we call it the immediate society (you can understand it, the social form of the future), and let's analyze the relationship between them and the distribution of resources.

In primitive society, man's own development level is limited, and the system formed by it is mainly dependent on the natural system itself, so its corresponding resource allocation mechanism is also completed through its instinct, due to the low level of man's own development, he can only rely on instinct to obtain limited living resources, and also distribute among all members in a basically equal way according to his instinct; People are separate individuals in nature and can be expressed as:

Person...... people-> access to > natural resources;

The promotion of human development by the resource allocation mechanism can be expressed as follows:

Natural resources, > distribution, > promotion, > human development;

In feudal society, the development of human beings has been greatly improved, and basically human beings have built a complete system and formed their own operating laws; At this time, the allocation of resources is mainly achieved by its force:

Person...... man (with his primitive instincts and his own development);

Person...... Man-> force-> man...... human-> system (feudal);

Person...... Human-> system (feudal)-> access-> natural resources;

The promotion of human development by the resource allocation mechanism can be expressed as follows:

system (feudal) - > distribution - > natural resources - > promotion - > people's own development;

At present, the development of human beings has reached a very high level, and the system constructed by human beings is partially separated from the natural system in a certain sense; At this time, human beings have been able to control natural resources very well, and the way in which they are distributed is mainly done through its "market mechanism":

Person...... human beings (with their instincts and their own development);

Person...... Man-> force-> man...... human-> institutions (diverse);

Person...... Human-> system (diversity) - > market mechanism - > access - > natural resources;

The promotion of human development by the resource allocation mechanism can be expressed as follows:

Market mechanism - > distribution - > natural resources - > promotion - > people's own development;

In the instant society, human beings themselves have developed to an extremely high level, and human beings can build a perfect system to achieve a state of mutual integration between their human systems and natural systems; Human beings can allocate resources in an optimal mechanism, that is, through an optimal way to achieve the allocation of resources:

Person...... Man (with his instincts and his own development) – > in a state of mutual tolerance;

Person...... People - > market - > reflect the true value of their things - > realize the optimal allocation of their resources;

The promotion of human development by the resource allocation mechanism can be expressed as follows:

Optimal allocation of resources – > sustain human development;

Through the above description, we now have a basic understanding of resource allocation, so how to summarize the quality of a mechanism, I remember we said before that a mechanism for the real and effective allocation of its resources, that is, the mechanism of its resource allocation and the true value of the thing itself close, can be used as a measure of the superiority of a mechanism; So how is this degree of tightness reflected, or how to judge, let's analyze it below;

For a mechanism, the judgment of its value standard is first to see whether the judgment of its value standard is correct and advanced, on the basis of a wrong or not advanced enough value standard, it is difficult to establish a complete and advanced value system, without an advanced system, it is difficult to have an advanced value system, that is, the value mechanism, the value of things is reflected through the corresponding mechanism to achieve its allocation of resources (such as our current society, the value of things is reflected through the market mechanism to reflect its price, and finally realize the distribution of its resources), Therefore, the judgment of a mechanism can be derived from: the judgment of value; the degree of perfection of the value system; The reflection of the real value of things by the operation of the mechanism is analyzed in three aspects; In fact, these three aspects are interrelated and inseparable, for example, the judgment of value directly affects the formation of its value system, and the degree of perfection of the value system directly affects whether the operation of its corresponding mechanism can achieve its effect; So these three aspects are actually three progressive stages of an overall whole;

First of all, let's look at the judgment of value, the fundamental purpose of our set of value theory is to put forward a correct value judgment standard for it, and a lot of discussion has been made on it. The process is not repeated here; Our judgment of value is based on this value theory; The second is the judgment of the value system, judging whether a value system is advanced, from whether it can be done, in the current stage of social development to minimize the cost of human ownership of things as the basis for judgment; That is, an advanced system must enable people to own their things at the lowest possible cost; At a stage, the whole system in which people live (i.e., the human system and the natural system) is generally conserved, so the reduction of the value of things is the decrease of their weight in the whole system, which represents the improvement of their own value, that is, the increase of the value of people in the whole system; Therefore, to improve the value of a thing, the real meaning of this sentence should be to improve its value to people, not its own value, literally is wrong, people are not pursuing to improve the value of things, and on the contrary, people are trying to reduce their value, that is, the weight of things in the system; Of course, the extent to which this reduction can be achieved by people's will is another question, but from the perspective of its overall system, the reduction of the value of things relative to people represents the reduction of its cost of ownership, and in a stable system, the operation of low value is a low-cost operation mode, and it is also a standard for whether the value system is advanced; For example, when the functional value and use value of a universal thing in a human system remain unchanged, when the natural value decreases, its overall value also decreases, but this only represents the reduction of its consumption of nature, and there is no change in the state of the whole system. In the same way, under the condition that the thing itself remains unchanged, the reduction of functional value represents the improvement of its technology, and the reduction of use value represents the reduction of its social application cost; Finally, let's take a look at the operation of its mechanism, we know that the true value of things is judged based on their weights in the system through their natural value, functional value, and use value, so whether the value of things in their system can directly reflect the system's demand for it, we know that the definition of weight is the ability of things to maintain the state of the system in which they are located; By definition, we can see that the weight of a thing can reflect the amount of demand for the system when it maintains a state; We call this demand general demand; It should be noted here that general demand is not equal to market demand; In a certain sense, market demand is a quantification of human desire, and it is not objective to judge the value of things; When we talk about general demand, we refer to the relationship between the amount of demand that the system needs for its things and the relationship between the state of the system and the amount of demand from it; is an objective expression; The general demand of things is converted into price through the mechanism, and the closeness of the price directly reflected through the mechanism and its general demand is the standard for the operation of a mechanism; It should be emphasized that there can be certain fluctuations in this conversion, and human beings can make subjective adjustments according to this fluctuation;

Section 2: The capitalist model of resource allocation

The word capitalism has a pejorative connotation at a given time, so countries that meet the conditions of capitalism are not willing to call themselves capitalist; But strangely enough, some of the characteristics in its definition are almost ubiquitous in today's world; The reason for this is determined by the objective degree of development; The word capitalism has no pejorative or positive connotation; The essence of the capitalist distribution model is a mechanism that uses capital as a means to operate the market, that is, the market mechanism; And this mechanism is advanced in its historical period; Let's analyze it in detail;

As we said in the previous section, the allocation of resources in human society is mainly influenced by two factors: people and institutions; The level of human development determines the allocation mechanism of its resources, and its resource allocation mechanism promotes human development; The society we live in today is a structure with the type of industrial personnel as the main body, which is determined by the objective level of human development, which is destined to allocate its resources in a way that is distributed by the market mechanism; Based on this, we can see that the structure with the type of industrial personnel as the main body is a necessary condition for the existence of its market mechanism. This market mechanism and the current level of human development determine our mainstream social form, that is, only a small number of industrial owners can directly participate in the division of labor in the market, and industrial personnel indirectly participate in the market division of labor through industrial owners. This system is essentially to ensure the law of its distribution of resources; The owner directly allocates resources through the market, and the industry personnel indirectly obtains resources through the owner; The relationship can be expressed as:

Resources-> (market division of labor-> industry owners) ......-> market-> industry personnel;

What should be explained here is that the division of labor in the market and the market itself are not factors that say that its "market mechanism" is good or bad;

We have said that the analysis of a mechanism should be considered from three aspects: its judgment of value, the degree of perfection of the value system, and the reflection of the operation of the mechanism on the true value of things. In the market mechanism, the judgment of value is determined by price; That is, the price of a thing shows its value, which has a problem, that is, the logical relationship between value and price, if the value of a thing is generated after its price, then we can say that the value of its thing is judged by the price; But if the value of a thing exists first with the price, we cannot say that its price determines the value, then the price is only an abstract reflection of value; This is why we say that the essence of Western economics does not recognize the existence of value, and the judgment of value in the entire system is based on human subjectivity. This criterion of value is obviously inaccurate; Let's analyze its value system, that is, the value of things is converted into prices through the market mechanism, and finally the distribution of its resources is realized; As we said above, there is no clear regulation and definition of value in its market mechanism, and only the price of things is described and analyzed in its system, so this kind of value-to-price conversion will have the risk of being far away from the real value of things and is uncontrollable; This situation is also common in its specific operation, let's take a specific example, look at the price change of American houses from 1890 to 2006, based on the house that sold for $100,000 in 1890, Before 2000, the lowest price was $65,000 in 1920, and the highest price was $125,000 in 1990, if we can still accept this rollercoaster change because of time, then the next 2000 to 2006, the price rose from $110,000 to $203,000 in just a few years, can you accept it, well, maybe the one-way rise makes us still try to understand, then in the next two years, the price has fallen back to $130,000 quickly around 2008, at this time we will still have hope for the value reflected in this price mechanism, I think normal people can't do it； If prices in the market mechanism reflect the true value of things, then I prefer to believe what they say is "worthless";

However, it should be noted here that although the distribution mechanism of capitalism itself is inefficient, it is characterized by low requirements for the level of human development, and the incentive effect on people is relatively easy to realize, which is of great significance to the degree of development of human beings today, and its characteristics of the distribution of resources can be simply summarized into two points: first, the incentives for people are easy to realize, so that the speed of human development is relatively fast; Second, the utilization rate of resources is low, and the waste of resources is large, which is inevitably determined by its distribution mechanism, that is, the market mechanism;

Section 3: The Socialist Model of Distribution

The socialist distribution model is a mechanism established on the basis of the development of human beings themselves to a very high level, so as to eliminate external factors and take people themselves as the main body to jointly occupy resources. This model is objectively generated after its development to a certain stage, rather than being established subjectively; Therefore, socialism itself opposes the establishment of external models to pursue mechanisms, and emphasizes its internal promotion; Let's give a general description of it: analyze the two factors of resources, namely people and mechanisms; The socialist model has high requirements for the level of development of the people themselves; It is required to have a high level of self-motivation in order to achieve cooperation as a free person; Its mechanism is in the form of a common appropriation of resources in order to achieve its efficient allocation of resources; In terms of form, it is easier to realize the reflection of the real demand for resources than the "market mechanism", but the incentive mechanism itself is more difficult to achieve, that is, the incentive effect is not strong. Therefore, the characteristics of its distribution method can be summarized as follows: 1. Low incentive effect on people; Second, the utilization rate of resources is relatively high, and the waste is low; What we need to explain here is that the corresponding distribution mechanism produced by the degree of human development is not equivalent to the level of human development required by human beings to form a new social system, that is to say, when a new distribution mechanism is generated, a new social system is not necessarily produced, and their relationship can be expressed as: human self-development - > distribution mechanism + human self-development = > social mechanism

Section 4: The Transitional Period of the Socialist Distribution Model

There are three important relationships in Marxist economics, namely the relationship between money and capital, the relationship between value and price, and the relationship between labor and labor. As a result, it is inevitable that there will be deviations in the behavior made on the basis of their understanding, which is objectively determined; For example, in Marxist economics, the division of money and capital is based on the difference in its use, that is, the role it plays in the entire social and economic cycle, so as to divide it into the function of money or capital, but in fact this is difficult to achieve, and its theory does not give specific methods and feasible standards, and it is difficult to solidify it in an economic activity based on money, for example, a commodity may be 5 monetary units or 10 monetary units at any time, If you zoom in on the whole market, you will find that in its extreme case, all currencies can be its monetary function, and in the other extreme case, all currencies can also be its capital function, for example, if everyone in the world hoards all the commodities they need for a year, and does not buy and sell any commodities during the year, but only invests in money, then all the currencies in the world are their capital functions, that is, they can be listed as capital. Of course, such a situation is unlikely to happen in the real world, but it is logically possible; Therefore, it is unlikely that it is possible to accurately distinguish between capital and money at any time, so it is not necessarily the most appropriate approach to understand Marxist economics by dividing it into two parts completely independently; The same situation also appears in the elaboration of the relationship between value and price, Marxist economics has a clear definition of value, but there is no clear explanation of its specific criteria, that is to say, there is no clear feasible method for judging the precise value of a specific thing, and in its discourse, there are often situations where the value of things is compared with the market price, such as the imbalance between the wages of workers and the income ratio of capitalists to explain their underestimation of the value of labor. In fact, the value is approximately equal to the price in the market mechanism; There is also this problem in the relationship between labor and labor, for example, in Marxist economics, it is clearly pointed out that labor itself does not have value, and labor has value, but the elaboration of why labor itself does not have value is not very specific and perfect, and if the labor itself does not have value, it is easy to fall into a misunderstanding if it is not deeply understood, for example, from the perspective of our "Value System - Chinese Economics", any behavior will have a certain impact on it relative to the whole systemOf course, under certain conditions, we can completely omit it; For these reasons, the understanding of Marxist economics must be based on the grasp of its overall framework, and cannot be viewed in simplistic and isolated terms, such as the description of value generation in Marxist economics, if we understand it as effective labor, that is, the abstract human undifferentiated labor creates value, if we are based on the above, we cannot simply divide it according to the difference between workers and capitalists, because they have no natural correspondence, if we want to determine that capitalists do not have human undifferentiated labor, then it is necessary to demonstrate it sufficiently and necessary, and then conclude that the activities of capitalists do not belong to labor and therefore do not create value, but Marx's economics does not demonstrate it, so we cannot say whether it is right or wrong what Marx did not say, but it is wrong to understand it in a tendentious way; Artificially understanding capitalists as pure capital is even more wrong; Here we should explain that the examples in Marxist economics often involve specific survival relations between capitalists and workers and related distribution relations, which we can understand here as containing the logical relations in its theory, but not a one-to-one correspondence, so it cannot be simply understood that capitalists do not create value;

The understanding of Marxist economics at the overall level can be divided into two parts, one is an attempt to describe the intrinsic essence of capitalism, and the other is the creation of an ideal mechanism; The two parts may be equal to the theory itself, but the proportion of the length of the description and analysis shows that the former part is much more important than the latter. Moreover, the practical significance of the former part is far greater than that of the latter part; The theories and corresponding mechanisms expounded by Marx's economics are only in a transitional stage for a more perfect theory;

Like the theories expounded by Marxist economics, all economic theories derived from capitalism are also within the same historical framework, which are explained in three aspects:

First, Marxist economic theory and capitalist economic theory are based on the current "market mechanism" when quantifying value, that is, the price in the market mechanism is used to express value, the difference is only that the economic theory of capitalism believes that the two are the same, while Marxist economics makes it clear that the existence of value is significant, but unfortunately he does not give an independent way of measurement, and it is difficult to do this with his description of value;

Second, the ownership and distribution model established by Marxist economic theory and capitalist economic theory at the philosophical level are based on human subjectivity, and as for the distribution model of public ownership proposed by Marx's economic theory in the later period, it is also based on the deformation within the framework of the value of "taking people as the standard", and here it does not change its essence by whether it is the external model of "private ownership" of the minority or the "public ownership" of the majority (or even all people); This is backward compared to the value of "taking the system as a whole";

3. The stage of human development in which Marxist economic theory and capitalist economic theory are located is two parts at the same level, and the inevitable crisis in the operation of capitalism itself and the correction of it by Marxist economics are a complete description of this stage, which can be a large cycle or permeate countless small cycles in its whole; (See Addendum-3)

Appendix 1

Distribution mechanisms in instant society

Here, we can help to understand the distribution mechanism by analyzing the distribution mechanism in the instant society; In the first section of Chapter 4, we talked about the criteria for judging the mechanism: the judgment of value, the perfection of the value system, and the reflection of the value by the operation of the mechanism; First of all, the judgment of value by the distribution mechanism in the instant society is determined based on the value system we say, that is, natural value, functional value and use value; We said that this is the criterion for judging value; The second is to see whether the value system itself is advanced, let's take a look at its description, in the above social system and distribution mechanism we said that in the immediate social stage, human beings have built a perfect system, including the natural system and the human system; The judgment of the value of a thing is expressed by its weight in two systems, that is, the general demand of the system for things; In the end, the general demand achieves the purpose of division of labor and resource allocation through the market; The process can be described as:

The above relationship is represented by a double arrow because the value of a thing is represented by the system as a general need and then allocated to people through the market to achieve the purpose of resource allocation; At the same time, people's consumption or recreation (production) of things will return their products to the market, which will change the state of the system, and the weight of its things will also change, and ultimately affect its price; Another point to note is that at this stage, the relationship between people and people is closer to the relationship between the owner and the owner, rather than the relationship between the owner and the person, the relationship between the person is equal to the market materials and the division of labor, but the division of labor is different, and the mode of cooperation between them is also various, it can be equal, or it can be an organization, according to its specific division of labor, but they are all oriented to the same market; From the above description, we can see that through the distribution mechanism of the instant society, each of us can directly access its resources to the market without any other constraints, so that the cost of owning things can be minimized; In the operation process of its mechanism, the allocation and division of resources of the market is realized through general demand, that is, the real value of things is expressed through the weight of the system; After the above analysis, we can clearly see that the distribution mechanism in the instant society is superior to the "market mechanism";

Appendix 2

The value of the artwork

The quality of a work of art has its own professional standards, and the value we are talking about here is its value to the human system, that is, the actual significance of the artwork to the human system and its weight expression in the system;

The value of a work of art should be reflected in its development of one's own development and the stimulation of one's behavior. The development of human beings is achieved through contact with the outside world, including the stimulation of human beings by artworks, which can be abstracted as the stimulation of the human brain, for example, babies in the process of their development, different stages will produce different reactions to external stimuli, and the corresponding changes in the brain, in the early stage of the development of visual function, babies have a strong response to their red, and the red itself has more important significance to the development of its infants than other colors and pictures; This can be used as a metaphor for the effect of a great work of art on adults;

The motivation of artwork to human behavior is manifested as the direct response of the brain after receiving the stimulus of artwork, such as placing several beautiful works of art in the office can improve the efficiency of staff; We call this conditioned response of the brain to the artwork here as the stimulus of the artwork; These two stimuli of artwork on people are reflected in the function of the brain and the emotion and its corresponding behavior, respectively, and usually these two stimuli are produced at the same time; For example, when we look at a work of art, it stimulates both our brain development and emotional behavior, but in different situations these two aspects may have their own emphasis, for example, in an exhibition hall it is more focused on brain stimulation, and in the workplace it is more focused on the impact on human emotional behavior; It should also be noted here that for the definition of artwork, we will analyze it below;

The work of art is the condensation of human abstract labor; For example, the impact of a painting or calligraphy on human beings is not the paper itself, nor the text and pigment itself, but the expression of the author's thinking; Here we can also put the singer's singing, the athlete's competition...... All of them are understood as a kind of abstract labor, and this kind of art itself can be called performance art, although it may not be quite the same as "performance art" as we usually understand it; But this artistic essence that they express through their own actions cannot be ruled out;

Appendix 3

economic crisis

Economic crisis is a unique manifestation of the market mechanism stage after the misallocation of resources; Its root cause is the imbalance in the distribution of resources, which accumulates in its operation, and the collapse of the mechanism function after reaching a certain level;

In its market mechanism, capital is the driving force that makes it operate, and the essence of capital is an abstract representation of the quantified ownership of resources; Moreover, among the main bodies of the market, the influence of the subjects with high capital share on their market mechanism is greater than that of the subjects with low capital share. Therefore, the subject with a high capital share has a natural superiority in its mechanism; Market entities participate in market activities for the purpose of obtaining their own profits; This kind of profit is measured by the income and expenditure of the individual, rather than the input and output of the system as a whole; Therefore, it is a vague reflection of the value and added value of things, and cannot reflect the real change of value;

Under this mechanism, the subject with a high market share aims to maximize its own interests, so that the amplification degree of the part of the value that it can have in the total value of resources through the operation of the market mechanism is higher than that of the part of the value owned by the subject with a low market share, that is, when the value of things is reflected in the price through the market, the value owned by the subject with a high market share is excessively amplified and the value owned by the subject with a low market share is relatively underestimated, and this trend is continuous; This also shows that the market mechanism is an operation mode with high social costs; The price generated by the market mechanism does not guarantee an effective reflection of the true value of things; Therefore, under this mechanism, the allocation of resources will inevitably be distorted, and it will be exacerbated with its operation, and eventually its resources will be seriously misallocated. The process is as follows:

The manifestation of this process in production is that the total amount of products in the market that market entities are willing to pay in their capital is less than the total amount of capital contained in the products in the market, that is, there is a surplus in the overall number of products in the market, and the market gradually reduces or stops the production of certain products, making it difficult for the capital in its possession to enter the market in the short term, which further weakens the amount of capital of the market entities that are willing to pay, and further stimulates the surplus of products in the market, and finally redistributes its resources through the collapse of prices in the existing mechanism. move on to the next cycle; What should be explained here is that in the process of redistributing resources, the specific situation is different, but its essence is the rebalancing of the proportion of capital, that is, the change of its price to the reflection of the real value of things through the change of the proportion of capital, so that it is within a more reasonable range until the arrival of the next crisis;

The market mechanism does not have a two-way nature in the allocation of resources, and will not spontaneously change the flow of its resource allocation, if its allocation deviates from the actual and reasonable model, the market mechanism itself will only exacerbate the deterioration of this situation, and if it wants to change, it must be adjusted by external forces;

At the production level, it is manifested as:

It must be pointed out here that the equalization of capital and the redistribution of resources based on people's own desires are not necessarily more efficient than the allocation of resources by the market mechanism, and their role is mainly to repair mistakes; The circular description of its entirety can be expressed as: