Inspired by the basest of all forms of human production, Tunjic uses the science of shit to solve the value problem.

This is Economics and company law reason to the dirt, reason and their practical purpose - to realistically explain what EVERYONE thought they already knew.

How nations are supplied with what is needed to live well.

At the heart of vulgar economics is the Problem of usefulness - How individuals, corporations, and governments harness their capitals to generate energy in its social form - Value.

Vulgar economics started as the Millennia Challenge in 2021. A competition with one competitor and only one goal - to theorise the production and supply of things that might be considered useful to civilisation.

Though a lawyer, the competition has transformed Tunjic into the vulgar economist.

Those familiar with economic history, will remember that Marx coined the term vulgar economics to describe “unscientific” economic theories that focus on the superficial, outward appearances of capitalism like supply and demand and are most useful and therefore defended, by the wealthy who have become its primary beneficiaries.

But, vulgar also means making explicit and taboo reference to bodily functions.

Perhaps obscured for millennia by humanities disgust for excrement, the uncanny similarity between faeces and the things we buy and the income we use to buy it with has somehow been missed. 

Dung is no less sweet to a dung beetle than the finest perfume is wrapped in a bow.    But to the horse and the cosmetics company poo and perfume are principally an output or a waste product. Something supplied and available in the field and market because it is of no use to the producer.

Vulgar economics is based on the idea that economics is better understood as the study of unwanted skat rather than scarcity. Unwanted things being the central organising principle of capitalism and governed by Say’s second or number two law.

With apologies to Spinoza, if you eat in hope, you will shit in fear. Likewise:

produce in hope supply in fear.

Says’ second law is an immutable law of motion as old as the market, that compels a producer to no less dispatch products, services and even money that are useless to the producer to the market, than a bear is compelled by nature to dispatch its shit to the woods. And, most likely governed by the same law of supply. The echo of entropy heard as much in the market as in the woods.

Demand may govern production. But supply is governed by an entirely different process.

Objective theories of value, like Marx's labour theory of value focus on the cost of production, and subjective theories of value, like neo-classical economics emphasise wants - profits and preferences. Whereas a vulgar theory of value analyses market exchange from the perspective of entropy and unwants - individuals and their money and corporations and their products and services.

Being grounded in Aristotle’s concept that all value is value in use, it is a proto-classical theory of value. But this description sanitises the raw and earthy self organising principle of markets and their relationship to the efficient allocation of value in use.

As impossible as it sounds, it is possible to soundly theorise that the urge and urgency to supply to markets results in social purpose without social responsibility - unusable things wanting to flow to where they are useful. The double co-incidence of unwanted unuseable things drawing buyer to seller together to distribute useful things to where they are used. With one existential proviso - never turn something useful to you into something useless to you and exchange it for something else that you can’t or don’t use.

Read this myth of a Greek myth, to understand why. Hermes, the mischievous god of finance, fates a herd of horses to value the frass of the dung beetle as highly as the beetle values the dung of the horse.  What could possibly go wrong?

When properly understood, Say's number two law predicts that an economy driven by individuals maximising their unexamined preferences and firms maximising profits will inevitably lead to a collapse in the production and supply of things that might be considered useful to civilisation. A system more vain than vulgar as the overwhelming number actions turn out to be fruitless and achieve nothing but the substitution of the useful for the useless. We end up winning some, but risk losing it all.

The goal of vulgar economics is to provide a theory that helps repair the damage caused by the neo classical theory of value that mistakenly believes that supply based on profits and demand based on consumer preferences will produce the quantity and variety of things required to flourish on this planet.  

Phi and the Black Theta

Phi and the black theta are to vulgar economics, what the hammer and sickle is to communism and the dollar is to 21st century capitalism.

Φ & Θ

These symbols are used as shorthand to describe the key theoretical concepts used in vulgar economics.

Value in Use - Φ (Phi) symbolises value in use or value understood as energy in a social form.

Counter Value - Θ (the black theta) symbolises the opposite of value in use and energy - counter-value.

The Millennia Challenge (MC).

The Millennia Challenge is a part time project started in 2021 that charts the development of vulgar economics from first principles (MC 1) to the present and emerging theory (MC 28).

The research is funded by my law firm, Tunjic Legal and Commercial Pty Ltd