What Are Economic Goods?

The product economy is an economic form relative to the natural economy and the commodity economy. It is also a future exchange mode for the future society after the demise of the commodity economy. The biggest difference between this exchange and commodity exchange is that the relationship between people is no longer expressed through the equivalent exchange of money as the medium, but is reflected through direct product exchange. In the form of social production, commodity production and commodity exchange have given way to product production and product exchange, and direct social labor, direct social production, and product distribution are organized by social centers. In the social regulation system, the conscious regulation of the social center replaced the spontaneous regulation of the law of value, and the planned development of social production replaced the anarchy.

Product economy

Product economy is relative to

Market economy concept

What is a market economy? About one hundred economists can make more than one hundred and one statements. Some people say that the market economy is a private economy; others say that the market economy is a value economy. Besides, it is said to be spontaneous economy, competitive economy, economy of survival of the fittest, credit economy, legal economy and so on.

Product economy

What is a market economy? it's actually really easy. A market economy is an economy that trades on the basis of equivalence.

Market economy benefits from social division of labor

The fundamental basis for the existence and development of a market economy lies in the universalization of division of labor. We said that there would be no market economy without industrialization. why? Because of industrialization and the production of large machines can create the material basis for the general division of labor in society. The natural economy of men and women weaving does not require exchange. Up to two children in a family exchange products. In the era of agricultural civilization, rural women touched the soles of Heina every night and could not afford the family to wear shoes. Using a machine, a worker can sew 100 pairs of shoes a day. Now the process has been improved, and there is no need to sew, but glue. A worker can stick 1,000 pairs of shoes a day. To produce so many shoes, of course not for him, or for his family, or for his boss. What is it for? Used for sale. Just exchange.

Exchange in a market economy

Division of labor is not the only basis for a market economy. Divideable exchange is not the only way to sell. There is also a division of labor under the planned economy, but a large number of products are "planned for transfer." Not really for sale. Because the traditional theory under the "big one and two public" system thinks that everyone is a family and does not need to be so clear. "The meat is rotten in the pot." Who is more and who is not all "national"? Or is it shared by the workers? We have tried to break the "big pot rice" in the early days of reform. However, the "big pot rice" mentioned at that time mainly referred to the "equilibrium distribution system" in the enterprise. In fact, the biggest "big pot rice" under the original system is not on the egalitarian distribution, but on the principle of market transactions that negate the equivalent exchange.

The exchange under the market economy is the "brother clear account" exchange. The two parties to the transaction must consider how much they must protect their own interests. Everyone has the experience of buying vegetables at a vegetable market and bargaining with a hawker selling vegetables. The price of radish cabbage is a dime, and the hawker's benefit is a dime. A dime is cheaper and a dime is more for the buyer's consumer interest. No one's money is for nothing.

Product economy

Please note that this behavior of "must defend your own interests" in the exchange is very important. It can be said that this is the fundamental starting point of all laws of the market economy. In all economics, there is in fact a common hypothesis that needs no proof. The premise of this assumption is that people are motivated to avoid harm.

Public interest and individual interest

Our reform practice has clearly demonstrated that public and common interests must be based on individual interests. When individual interests are denied, public interests are actually denied. In the people's communes before the rural reform in China, the "work division system" was implemented. Theoretically, whoever works will lead to an increase in everyone's score. Does this "point system" link everyone's interests? However, it has been proved in practice that such a system design that negates individual interests has led to the peasants' resistance to doing nothing The endless political movements and repeated "selflessness" education have not helped. As a result, everyone is poor, and no one's interests are protected. At the end of the 1970s, the first reform we carried out was to "separate fields into households," recognizing the individual interests of farmers. What happens in the end? It was during the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People s Republic of China in 1984. At the time of Deng Xiaoping s parade in Tiananmen, farmers across the country chanted on the field of hope.

We don't want to get involved in such a meaningless argument as to whether people are selfish. In my opinion, this argument is like a paradoxical proposition that "the omnipotent God can ask a question that he cannot even answer." Paradox itself is pedagogy. Studying paradoxes is also meaningful. As we will see below, all activities in the market economy are full of paradoxes. For example, "decentralized ownership can focus resources more efficiently." But this "selfishness" argument is to use the philosophical proposition of human nature to explain realistic and vivid socio-economic life. So far, we have not been able to understand it simply as a desire for an ideal society. This is a typical "metaphysics". There is a "guimiao method" in the argument. For example, we can ask, should people die, shouldn't they avoid death and survive?

In fact, the report of the 16th CPC National Congress has already answered this question. The 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China reported that it is impossible to distinguish between people's political advancement and backwardness based on whether they have property or not, and whether there is more or less property. In my opinion, we can interpret this sentence in theory as not being able to distinguish between people's political advancement and backwardness based on whether people have the self-motivated motivation to avoid the disadvantages. The report of the 16th National Congress of the CPC said that the key depends on how people's property comes from. In our problem, the key is to have rules for gaining advantage and avoiding harm.

Optimal allocation of resources

Everyone knows that any resource is limited. What economics focuses on is limited resources, or the optimal allocation of scarce resources. Due to limited resources and limited opportunities, when people want to avoid the disadvantages, competition issues arise.

Competition in a market economy

Insufficient supply, everyone wants to buy, then there is demand-side competition. With sufficient supply and insufficient demand, sellers want buyers to give priority to their own products. There is competition on the supply side. Bargaining between supply and demand is manifested as competition between supply and demand. In fact, competition in a market economy is omnipresent. Its manifestations are also changing. Not only will there be competition between products in the same industry and between products that meet the same needs, such as competition between publishing houses and television stations; companies that produce completely different products will also compete. Because it is possible that two companies and two industries will use the same resource. For example, petroleum can be used as both a fuel and a chemical product. And oil is limited. Technology substitution, function substitution, and utility substitution all lead to competition.

In the course of reforms in the past few years, everyone is already familiar with the existence of competition. But I am afraid there are still different views on the evaluation of competition. Because competition necessarily involves a problem, that is, the issue of fairness. Still others have moralized competition in a market economy, saying that admitting that people will "benefit benefits and avoid harm" already has a taste of "suppressing the good and promoting evil". It is also necessary to promote competition. The theory of sin?

As you may recall, on the eve of the Spring Festival 2001, the State Planning Commission held a hearing on the issue of "raising passenger trains."

Hearings and price competition

This hearing is actually the use of price competition to solve the problem of resource allocation and fairness. In the Spring Festival example, do we have any other solutions? There are too. For example, we can also avoid the price increase and continue to let everyone queue up in advance. However, in this method, the cost of passengers queuing all night, the cost of "walking through the back door",

Product economy

The cost of the tickets earned is added together. It can be said with certainty that the price paid by the demand side is far greater than the price of the increase in train tickets. More importantly, as the demand side, the price paid by passengers when the price increases will directly help the railway to increase supply in the future, and the price paid by passengers in the "queue" scheme will not help the railway supply increase at all. As another example, we can also use the rationing method under the planned economy. Each citizen issued a 500-kilometer railway ticket, and everyone went to adjust the balance. Does this plan sound fair enough? But can society afford, or is it necessary to afford, such a large cost of resource allocation? And it can be asserted that even if this scheme really works, the black market for "tickets" will immediately flourish. Can passengers who really need to buy tickets really pay less?

Fairness in competition

So do we not need to care for the disadvantaged in the competition? Don't you need to be fair? need. This fairness is equally possible and should be achieved through price leverage. That is to increase the price increase of soft sleeper tickets and reduce the price increase of hard seat tickets. The actual price increase plan later proved to be correct.

We said that increasing the price of soft sleeper tickets is a kind of non-market unfairness? No. This proposal makes good economic sense.

"Shadow prices" and "opportunity costs"

There are two very important concepts in economics, one is called "shadow price" and the other is "opportunity cost".

Let's start with "shadow prices". One of the reasons for the Ministry of Railways' price increase during the Spring Festival is the existence of "shadow prices". In the train ticket example, roughly speaking, the price sold by the ticket seller is the shadow price of the Spring Festival fare. Ticket sellers all know that hard seat tickets can't make much money, and the increase in fares is very limited. Sleepers can make money. This is because of scarcity. This scarcity is manifested not only in the low number of sleeper tickets, but also in the purchasing power of those who buy sleeper tickets. The shadow price is the price that best reflects the scarcity of resources. Since your Ministry of Railways has justified the "shadow price" reason, you should follow the price difference shown by the "shadow price". The "shadow price" of soft sleepers is the highest, so soft sleepers should rise more.

Let's talk about "opportunity cost". You have to do less business when you come to the lecture. The loss of doing less business is your opportunity cost of listening to the lecture. To make people say that listening to this course is "value", you must make everyone think that the benefit of listening to this course is greater than your opportunity cost.

What is the opportunity cost of the railway in the Spring Festival example? We assume that under normal circumstances, the fare sales income of a hard seat car and a soft seat car is 10,000 yuan. Now, due to the Spring Festival super crowd, more people are crowded into the hard seat. Let s say 50%. The fare does not rise, and a hard-seat car can already earn 15,000 yuan in fare. However, soft seats are generally not overcrowded, and the income is still 10,000. You said that the railway should not consider hanging one soft bed and one hard seat, or raising the price of a soft bed by 50%? Because at this time the opportunity cost of soft sleeper cars has increased by 50%. Increasing the price by 50% can make the opportunity cost of soft sleepers equal to the opportunity cost of hard seats. This is fair.

The hard seat income is increased by 50% in the case of overcrowding. That is to say, the space enjoyed by each passenger has been greatly reduced. The soft sleeper may increase the price by 50% because there is no overcrowding, and the space for passengers is not reduced. So should passengers in soft sleepers pay more for the possession of high-quality resources under the imbalance of supply and demand? should. In this example, in the case of no increase in the price of the hard seat, it is not enough to increase the soft sleeper by only 50%. It should be 80%, or even 100%. If the hard seat raises the price, the soft sleeper should rise more.

Market economy and competition

This is the market economy. This is competition. What are the benefits of competition? There are three main benefits to competition. One is to optimize the allocation of resources. Improve the utilization efficiency of limited resources. The second is survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest not only means the allocation of resources to more efficient dominators, but also the more important thing is to continuously promote the continuous development of society, markets, and technology. The third is to reduce social transaction costs. On many occasions, there is no need to hold many meetings, and the discussion is endless. Whoever bids high will be sold to whom. Decisions become very simple.

To understand what a commodity economy is, we must first have a simple understanding of the basic forms of socio-economic operations. During the development of human society, there are roughly three basic forms of socio-economic operation: (1) Produce what they need and be self-sufficient. This form of economic operation is called natural economy. (2) Use the labor products produced by yourself to exchange with other labor products produced by others, so as to obtain what you need. This type of economic operation is called the commodity economy. (3) Although it is not self-sufficient, obtaining what you need is not obtained through exchange, but through centralized and unified distribution of social center institutions. This type of economic operation is called the product economy. Natural economy is an economic form that is compatible with extremely backward social productivity levels. Commodity economy is based on socialized mass production as the basis of productivity, and it is the most basic economic form in the development of human society. The commodity economy has gone through different stages of development, and the market economy is the developed stage of the commodity economy. The product economy is based on highly developed productive forces and is based on the premise of the consistency of social and economic interests. It is Marx's vision of a future communist society.

influences

The commodity economy has a profound impact on our study, life and work. For example, the commodity economy requires people to be honest and trustworthy. Commodity economy is credit economy in the final analysis, credit is the main theme of commodity economy and social morality, and credit is a pass that has won universal recognition and respect from society. The core of the commodity economy is "exchange". The reason why thousands of people who don't know each other willingly cross the national and provincial boundaries to exchange the goods they need is because they have credit. The development of the commodity economy has also effectively overcome the ideology of being conservative, standing still, narrow-minded, and afraid of change, reflecting the side that is conducive to the improvement of people's moral standards. Of course, while the commodity economy has brought us a positive influence, it also has many negative effects on social life because the commodity economy believes in the principle of the supremacy of interests. For example, under the impact of the commodity economy, the quiet and peaceful state of mind in the past has been broken, and social changes have tested family and friendship. Many precious things have been lost, and family and friendship have become indifferent. Competition and the commodity economy have almost made people tired of chasing and have no time to look around. Wrong life pursuits such as money worship, egoism, and moral relativism have appeared. At the same time, the pursuit of the ideal of truth, goodness and beauty has become increasingly indifferent. People seem to no longer believe in the lofty and no longer respect the spiritual realm of altruism. In short, the impact of the commodity economy on us is comprehensive.