One of the reasons I need to commit to a more disciplined reading of theory is to better express this idea I have about surplus value. It makes me think of how people are all “if you took all of Bezos’ wealth you wouldn’t even be able to pay for healthcare for a year!” I’m not concerned about the dollars that he has, I’m concerned about the societal-social contract we all tacitly endorse where he has infinite buying power. That idea has its basis in the Communist Manifesto.

So in that same vein, you could theoretically go AFK on the clock and eventually get back the same buying power you would have if you worked in the presence of justice, sure. Marx has the simple equation regarding the labor-time spend to create a product. The surplus is the value of the labor minus the wages paid for it. So yes, if you could put a price tag on the goods you produce, you could find that number of hours.

But that doesn’t feel like a path towards liberation. Notably, you’re still likely spending that money on rent and health insurance. Your taxes are going to harassing farmers half the world away. Even all of that aside - it’s not really getting at the idea of surplus value, just providing a backdrop to talk about it with. I think it’s harder to put that price tag on the goods and services today than it was in the 1850s. If you’re making algorithms for day trading or making billboard ads then you’re not making society any better - I’d argue you’re making it worse. So it’s like making a valuation in Bezos bucks for causing harm.

Therefore it seems two dimensional and small to use S = LT - W to get a number for what you’re owed. In its best application such a number might clue you into the idea that you’re being conned out of a good world. But that means that it’s a signpost that might allow you to consider the colossal inputs into the system only to get absolute bullshit in return. It’d scratch the same itch as seeing the beautiful metros and cityscapes in China compared to how America looks. It’s the same way that Bezos’ dollars matter a lot less than the possible social good+utility of a giga datacenter that could stream media seamlessly in a single app alongside the resource organization and distribution of the warehouse system. You wouldn’t need to go AFK for X amount of hours to afford spotify, a bunch of show subscriptions, and plastic toys from China if they were just part of the one app with society’s music+movies+games and a well staffed warehouse that can get to items to you when convenient.

We need to have a conversation like “what the fuck are we doing here?” Healthcare doesn’t need to cost that much. Food doesn’t need to be that insecure and wasted. Housing doesn’t need to be a commodity. Education is easier to come by than the price tag would suggest. Don’t even get me started on transport! Nobody needs your AFK soul to sit in an office staring at an excel sheet or frankly digging in a coal mine for everyone to eat, drink, and sleep. You’d be better served in a better society if you didn’t have to think about how many hours you must spend idly and instead got to think about what needs to get done. Given the opportunity and bandwidth, some people would create shit sometimes instead of regurgitating Toy Story plot lines and IPOs for enshittified SaaS products. If the goals weren’t to make the numbers look good for Q3 and instead designing automation, high speed rail, power plants, and green+human friendly architecture then not only would you likely be getting a bigger share of the pie, you’d be getting a much more delicious pie. So much so that even if you got the same percentage of your surplus labor as today you probably wouldn’t care because life would be good and you’d get a say in how the public decides to spend the surplus together.