In this part of the series, I want to return to the concept of the prime mover or principia media introduced in part 10.
As it has been some time since I’ve provided an update on my work, I’ll first try and summarize where I’m up to in the Millennia Challenge - beginning with my conclusion.
I’ve proposed that the best use of a thing:
is the use that results in an increased capacity to bring about socially useful change; and
is marked by an increase in available and accessible value in use or energy in its social form.
A calculation theoretically possible because all things of use objectively possess a shared characteristic or universal measure of equivalence in their ability to bring about change over time. Something I describe in my work as as phi - Φ.
Based on this understanding of value in use, I’ve gone on to propose that the mechanism by which value in use increases or decreases can be understood using a simplified energetic model comprising:
sources of value in use physical and fiat capitals; and
prime movers that transform those sources of value into new ( and either greater or lesser) sources of value in use .
Why does value in use matter and why bother theorizing about the best use of a thing.
At an elemental level, value in use is a predictor of sustainability and the generation of the conditions that are necessary for life and longevity. Other factors remaining constant, a society tends to thrive as the value in use, available and accessible per capita and across all capitals, increases. Likewise, a reduction in either or both the sources in value or the number and types of prime movers required to generate value in use from them, is a harbinger of decline. Put simply, if less useful things exist (whether by action or omission) fewer useful things can be done.
The Source of Value
At this point it’s easy to get confused. Things produced for exchange derive their value from the sources of exchange value. Whereas things produced for their use derive their value from the sources of value in use. A things exchange value can be understood by examining the source of exchange value - simplistically, supply vs demand. But this tells us nothing of its usefulness.
It should be no surprise, least of all to economists, if the planet is running out of useful things - clean air, biodiversity a habitable climate. Considerations of usefulness playing no part in the decision to produce things for their exchange value.
Theories of value in exchange have historically been searching for the invariant unit or measure of equivalence that explains the source of exchange value. Put simply, how things of different qualities, properties and uses are comparable in exchange - shoes for coats. In this context, two approaches dominate history - donor or supply side theories (classical and labour theories of economics) and receiver or demand side theories ( neo-classical theories of economics).
But despite their fundamental differences, both categorically rule out the usefulness of the object in their consideration. locating the source of value in past supply (labor theories of value) or in the present demand (neo-classical theories of value). As helpful as this might be to theorizing about the production of things with exchange value, these factors are irrelevant to theorizing whether those things are increase or reduce our capacity to do useful things in the future.
Theories of value in use, or at least the one I’m working on through the Millennia Challenge, are based on understanding the invariant unit that explains how things (capitals) are transformed into useful things that are more useful. The source of value in use is located in the idea of future use or transformation of an actual capital or combination of capitals . What can a capital objectively do rather than what has been done to the capital in the past or on the demand side of the present (what do I feel) and on the supply side (can the the capital be turned into profit in the next 90 days).
Depending on the nature of a capital, a capital can be transformed in one or more ways:
use ie. using the shoes as a shoe
substitution through exchange of capitals
conversion to form a capital with different characteristics and properties
“transubstantiation” - a process whereby capitals are transformed into incorporeal or fiat capitals such social and cultural capitals (and vice versa)
living (in the case of animate capitals) - the act of living generates and dissipates value in use. In all things being equal, life is the best use of life because life is essentially a prime mover. It is self evident that life generates value in use> However, transform the animate into the animate and not only has that life been destroyed but all the value in use that life would there wise have generates over the course of life. Again, at an elemental level “energy” is removed from the future. No longer available or accessible to support all other life.
Theories of value in use are intended to explain how all things are commensurate given a capital can be transformed in so many ways and therefore have multiple uses. The search is for a kind of universal currency that helps us decide the combination of (a) which capitals are best to transform, and (b) which process of transformation yields the greatest increase in value in use. In this way, rather than trying to put a monetary or financial value on say natural capital, we’re able to put a value in use value on financial capital. Giving visibility and transparency to the usefulness of financial capital relative to every other capital each and to prioritize their production accordingly.
Again why is this important?
Without an understanding of value in use there is no way of knowing which is the best use and which uses are best avoided . We must wait in equal measure of hope and fear for time to cast its judgement. And, more practically whether we approach the future with more useful things or less. Arguably, there is nothing more useful than a good theory of use. And, if biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change are any measure nothing more risky than making decisions about the use of all things, without considering the impact of those decisions on usefulness.
If supply and demand is the source of value in exchange, capitals and prime movers are the source of value in use.
The Role of the prime Mover in Generating Value in Use
In science, a prime mover is anything that transforms a source of energy into work. For most of history, life was the dominant prime mover— plants converting light energy into chemical energy and humans and animals, converting that chemical (food) energy to the kinetic (mechanical) energy called work. Later prime movers animated by wind and water would arrive sails; then waterwheels and windmills. Until in the 19th century the arrival of inanimate prime movers, steam engines that fed on coal, combustion engines that fed on diesel and so on.
I propose that when applied to the generation of value in use or energy in its social form, a similar ( if not identical) phenomenon is at work.
Each form of capital possesses different characteristic that determines its compatibility with a prime mover or means of transformation. The interaction between the source and the prime mover generating the output capital that possesses either more or less available value in use. Without a compatible prime mover, any value in use remains trapped within a capital or is more accurately, inaccessible. Inevitably becoming unavailable to a system under the influence of entropy.
The prime mover concept extends to anything that transforms a capital into the work of change now or in the future:
Animate things used to transform physical and fiat capitals ie. living things including humans;
Inanimate things used to transform physical capitals ie. technologies
Incorporeal things used to transform fiat capitals ie. concepts and theories including politics, culture, religion etc
In time, I hope to catalogue social prime movers. But for the purpose of today’s post my goal is to suggest that each rising or growing capital owes its existence to a prime mover that transformed it into existence. And each falling capital, is also transformed out of existence and into another capital by a prime mover.
Today, the most powerful prime mover is the market or more precisely the idea that the generation of exchange value determines the best use of a thing. If a capital no longer exists – clean water, a species, a population, a language, an ecosystem – chances are it was directly or indirectly transformed out of existence in pursuit of a product or a profit. And with it all the work that those capitals were doing and would have kept on doing were it not for the gravity of market forces.
Though sounding critical of markets, that’s not my full intention.
As discussed in part 16 and 17, markets tend to produce a net increase in available value in use or capacity to bring about change when counter parties experience symmetrical disequilibrium. That is, each party accesses more value in use by exchanging their capitals than by holding them. In this way, conceived through the lens of value in use, capitalism can be seen as a way of efficiently coordinating entropy.
The problem with markets as prime movers is that, despite many economists believing that demand and supply can solve everything from climate change to environmental crisis, there is a very specific use case for markets.
In the absence of symmetrical disequilibrium, markets tend to transform high quality /low entropy appreciating capitals into low quality/ high entropy capitals. Put simply, markets have an uncanny ability to accelerate entropy. The characteristics of manufactured and financial capital observably do less work and for less time when compared to other forms of capital. The reason for this is deceptively simple, in thermodynamic terms, any system that prioritizes the generation of things with an energy content that is unavailable to that system to use or feed on - in the case of corporations - principally their products and profits - is increasing positive entropy. But we’ll get into that when considering the relationship between the value in use and the modern corporation in future parts.
But markets also have an even more pernicious impact on other prime movers and their ability to continue to transform capitals into growing value in use:
displacing other prime movers that prioritise the transformation of high quality/ low entropy capitals – art and education into social, intellectual and human capital
transforming other powerful prime movers into products and profits ie.
transforming animate prime movers such as animals and ecosystems that would otherwise dissipate (and keep dissipating) value in use in the form of natural capital.
transforming cultural prime movers that would otherwise dissipate value in use in the form of social capital
suppressing innovation into alternative sources of value in use and prime movers that do not involve markets and market processes
de-legitimating
other forms of capital that are incompatible with markets ie those capital that lack ex-changeability
other prime movers as the source of value in use
Leading to a state whereby anaemic financial and manufactured capital have arguably become the primary source of value in use in society. Replacing social, intellectual, human and natural capital and their affiliated prime movers of art, education, community and faith as the sources of an individual’s value in use. A state I describe as “decapitalism”. More money but less capacity to change.
The net of effect of which is an overall decline in available and accessible value in use at precisely the wrong time. Remembering value in use is arguably the most important metric when determining humanities ability to respond to bring about change in the face of crisis. Implying that solutions to our challenges might be found in theory of value abandoned 300 years ago.
why DON’T WE HAVE a theory of Value in Use
Why did value in use not emerge as an object of serious intellectual inquiry and investigation? Why did economists prioritize exchange value over value in use? What would the world look like if economists had not chosen value in exchange as the seed in the matryoshka of neo-classical theories - value > the firm > governance and now to the frustration of many many in the sustainability movement > integrated reporting.
Elke Pirgmaier offers the following explanation:
Because a society that produces most goods and services for sale on markets is a society that produces predominately for exchange. How could it be otherwise? … In such societies, commodities are primarily produced for exchange, which implies that exchange value shapes and dominates production decisions, not use value.
Society will do what society does. I understand. But that does not mean we must deny our lungs, and hold to the belief that the best use of thing is found under the bright lights of the intersection of consumer preference and firm profit. In the absence of a workable theory of value in use, society only has one way of testing this hypothesis.
For a society that fails to generate value in use because it prioritized exchange value eventually discovers its mistake. All the use full things, water, air, bio diversity, life mass, community and beauty transformed into things for exchange. And all the things produced for exchange unable to be transformed back into enough things of use. A full world transformed into an empty world with no meaningful understanding of the mechanism required to reverse the process.
What might have been has gone but what still may be is unimaginable.