Wednesday, August 28, 2013

True Price in a Free Market


"A ‘true price’ is forthcoming when a person receives, as counter-value for the product he has made, sufficient to enable him to satisfy the whole of his needs, including of course the needs of his dependants, until he will again have completed a like product."  Rudolf Steiner, 29 July 1922

As I start reading on associative economics it seems that the biggest problem facing anyone trying to implement this would be how the idea of true price interfaces with the real market. For example, if I bake a loaf of bread my true price would be substantially higher than for a bakery producing lots of loaves. In a perfect market my loaf will not sell because cheaper ones are available.

For associative economics to work there would have to be a disruption of the market through people placing a value on the community aspects of trade and production. At this point i am unsure how that could be achieved.