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Mozart's Town
By Marc Gauvin
Addressing the false assertion "it is impossible to have an objective standard to measure value because no one knows what value is " and therefore "money will always be a tool of power".
The claim is false, if we define value as it is defined in the English language i.e. value is the relative importance or utility assigned to something, then value can be measured.
The second thought is the subjectivity of value i.e. one thing may have a different measure of value between people and at different times. While that is true, it doesn't follow that such impedes the objective measure of importance/utility given to something in any given transaction. The other point, is that value is not always subjective, any necessary unskilled task that the vast majority are capable of realising, is usually measured in the average human effort it takes to perform. For example baby sitting or extracting water from a well, these will be given a standard value.
Finally, the subjective value given to say a work of art, is ultimately determined by the amount of objective effort others are willing to give for it e.g. how many hours of unskilled labour one is willing to give to attend a concert or to buy a particular painting. So, while some things may have a subjective value, the value pledged may be quite objective.
In this regard, consider (hypothetically) Mozart's town of say 100 people, the average amount of time it takes to maintain one's life style doing one of the many basic activities (production, distribution, skilled and unskilled labour) is around twenty hours a week. Mozart produces a concert every week, for which he toils all day, leaving no time for plumbing and carpentry or most any other activity, for which he requires others to do that for him say on average 20 hours a week. The question is, will enough people give of their time above and beyond their own 20 hours a week maintenance to attend one of Mozart's concerts? Concretely, will Mozart's weekly concert be valued at say 0.4 hour of average labour per attendee to his concert, assuming at least 50/100 town folk attend or 50 tickets on average are sold? That is a concrete objective measure of value given to one of Mozart's Concerts.
That means with only half the town attending, Mozart meets his maintenance needs* freeing himself up to dedicate all waking hours to his beloved composing. While Salieri in contrast who might not garner more than on average 0.1 hour per attendee* would require more than the population of the town to meet the same 20 hour per week maintenance cost.
So here we have a perfect example of how the subjective value of music is objectively evaluated in terms of the objectively observed amount of average labour expenditure a certain standard of living requires.
The other matter of "it will always be an instrument of power", also doesn't follow if as mentioned before the accounting system is Passive.
* 0.4 hours x 50 fifty tickets = 20 hours, 0.1 hours x 100 = 10 hours.
