Steve Keen

This difference to unskilled labour appears very high, but first of all, the time a skilled worker is officially working as an employed person fails to include the time learning things. And second: Suppose in a company with piece-wage, somebody is working much faster than most. You wouldn't say he's exploiting the others, right? So I don't think it's sensible to jump from the hourly pay to a conclusion that X % of that person's income (anything above average?) must be benefit from exploiting others.

Time spent learning things goes towards development of labor power, which is one reason why programmer labor power is expensive. Another reason is that the average cost of a college degree is part of the cost of their labor power. This is time spent on self-improvement, and is not going into the value of the source code. As well, most programmers spend ample time learning and doing research on the job, and spend comparatively little time learning in their spare time.
As an aside, an interesting feature of "work" in general is that it develops the labor power of the worker to a lesser or greater extent by giving them experience. This explains why worker's wages go up the longer they work in a particular field.

Of course not, this is simply a higher density of labor. Said worker will be paid for their greater expenditure of labor power while still being exploited, as they had a corresponding greater output of labor. This has nothing to do with programmers, especially since it is seemingly impossible to quantify and measure programmer output.

It doesn't matter how "hard" a programmer works in a day (again, can't be measured), his wages are far higher than his labor output in that day. This means he never works for free, and in fact is literally profiting. It's a separate issue that his work is not economically productive, since many people in unproductive sectors are paid typical wages.

I am almost certain I was listening to a podcast with Paul Dickblast about how you can reduce oil and what not, but not time. That is the thing inherently wrong with these things, not that they "dont stand up to scientific testing". You CAN link these things to industrial output, they just fail when you link them to themselves. Your video, while interesting, only shows a superior aspect of labor to oil/electricity, whcih I obviously already agreed with. Furthermore, it still shows the linkability of oil/electricity to industry. They clearly went up as labor did, just that, as I said, labor was absolutely superior.
Why not give evidence for your claim "you can get four seconds of labor out of three seconds of labor". That is infinitely more interesting to me. I am not a marxist economic, but I am pretty much certain that is wrong. Surplus value comes from Value - Variable Costs -Fixed Costs. I cant remember if those terms are exactly correct, but Marx made it pretty clear that surplus value is the differences between wages + fixed costs and the value of a product.

Yes, it was Paul Dickblast who said this. I am crunched for time so I cant tell you when he says it, but he says it here.
fromalpha2omega.podomatic.com/enclosure/2014-02-22T01_42_40-08_00.mp3

Very simple. Surplus labor comes from people's ability to work longer than they need to survive. So, you can give a man four labor hours worth of food, and he produces eight hours worth of food in return. This is possible because food grows in sunlight, doing most of the process of production for us.
Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean, but to my understanding, this is like "four seconds of labor out of three seconds of labor," and can be compared to "0.7 barrels of oil to get one barrel of oil."

I'll be curious to listen when you can get the timestamp later.

t. retard who doesn't understand basic Marxist terminology. Petty bourgeois is a term for the small business-owners who don't have the enormous capital of larger industrial capitalists and thus have slightly different class interests. It literally means 'small capitalist'. Having a shitty STEM degree and earning a slightly higher wage does not make you a petty booj.
The idea that programmers are petty booj is pretty ironic considering how exploitative the IT sector can be - what with the prevalence of unpaid internships and extreme, often uncompensated, overtime. The industry is ripe for unionisation.

AHAHAHAH. I have finally gotten to the bottom of this! I was watching Paul Cockshott, and I think I know how you have confused surplus value.
You have confused the idea of wages, and thusly, surplus value. Wages are the commodity price of reproducing labour. Labor reproduces itself in so many fractions of an hour, but I dont think that reduces the actual value of the whole labor hour. Maybe it does though…. hmmmm.
Either way, I believe you confused surplus value. Here is the Paul Cockshott video I was watching.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=hVPeSp8h22M

No, but having a bourgeois level of income (see ) and profiting from stocks and user labor does.

All the programmers I know are getting paid $30 or even $50 an hour at internships.

No, they're the price of reproducing labor power.

Only if someone is eating while working. Otherwise, you're talking about turnover of variable capital.

It doesn't, but surplus = labor time - cost of labor power.

yeah a lot of people ignore this. automation just means tools that wagecucks have to use are getting more efficient, not that they're being replaced.

Again? Classes have nothing to do with wealth. Stop this please, it's getting silly.