A Classical Political Economy Interlude

• This being a Monty Python movie, we now have a little animated episode

• Narrator asks, "How did those two guys determine the rate at which potatoes exchange for chickens?"

• Responds:

  • According to orthodox economists,

    • ... it's all just subjective preferences

    • ... expressed in demand and supply curves

  • But according to earlier classical economists,

    • ... it's the amount of labor, direct and indirect, that went into the production of the two goods being exchanged

    • The labor theory of value