Reply #86: No.

[EstimatedProphet]

By Capitalist models, everyone receives value at least equal to what they give, or no exchange would take place.

Profit is defined as the difference between the value of a product (in this case, labor) and the lesser amount of money exchanged for it. That statement describes a profitless system. There's no capitalist models that assume that labor is exchanged for its true worth. That system would never get started.

While reality doesn't always work that way, it is still true that the value received for labor is greater than what would be received by not selling the labor.

No. That is not at all always the case. For example, here's a possible case: I have a small farm (~10 ac) on which I raise my own food. On those 10 acres I keep some chickens and raise vegetables. Now, instead of continuing to work on the farm, I decide to take a job working at McDonalds, which happens to be the only business around (rural area) and I work there for 8 hours a day making minimum wage. Until that time, I was able to keep my family fed on those 10 acres (which is enough to raise food for a family of 4 for a year if worked judicially), but now I make a wage which is not enough to keep myself going, let alone my family, for a year. I am now worse off by selling my labor. Although you may think this is a silly comparison, it does get to the heart of the problem we have in this country right now - by manipulating the system, capitalists have shifted the balance between labor and capital towards their own ends. Outsourcing, education costs rising to the point that higher education is impossible for many, "right to work", corporatizing of business, and many other factors have resulted in forcing people into situations where options are too limited to make the best choices for exchanging labor for value. How do you make the best bargain for your labor when the only options for selling that labor are Wal-Mart and McDonalds? This dilemma is all too common today. In the case I described above, the person with the small farm at least has some capital (the farm) which can be used for support, but what about all the people who don't have any capital? They have no choices but to sell their labor, and if there is no one willing to buy their labor for significantly greater amounts, then they don't have the choice to enable them to benefit from the transaction.