869 research outputs found
How physics is validating the labour theory of value
This article originally appeared in German and subsequently in several other languages.
It looks at how the work of econophysics theorists from the 1980s to the 2000s in particularly the work of Farjoun, Machover and Yakovenko has validated many of the original propositions of the labour theory of value
Is the theory of a falling profit rate valid?
Marx's theory of the falling rate of profit makes two main appearances in his work.
The first is in Chapter 25 of Capital Volume 1, entitled: The General Law of Capitalist
Accumulation. It is further developed in Part III of Volume 3 of Capital, entitled The
Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.
In this paper I will outline the structure of the theory presented in these two
volumes of Capital. Following that I will look at some criticisms that have been levelled
at it. I will go on to argue that the criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of some
of the dynamic causal mechanisms that Marx assumed. Following on from this I shall
present a dynamic solution to the equations of accumulation and show under what
circumstances these lead to a falling rate of profit. The dynamic model will then be
used to analyse the trajectories of some contemporary capitalist economies and to help
understand the current structure of the world economy
Marxian Reproduction Prices Versus Prices of Production: Probability and Convergence
I shall argue two main points. The first is that although Marx is
conventionally taken to have formulated two different theories of
price in the the three volumes of Capital, labour values in volume
I and prices of production in volume III, there is actually a third
theory, hidden inside the reproduction schemes of volume II. This
theory is not explicit, but can be logically deduced from the constraints
that he presents on simple reproduction. It is not a theory of individual
prices, but a theory of relative sectoral prices.
I will go on to argue that this theory of sectoral prices allows us
to make probabilistic arguments about the relative likely-hood that
either production prices or labour values will operate at the level
of reproduction schemes. This paper provides a measure on the configuration
space associated with Marxian prices of production and labour values.
By use of random matrix techniques it shows that the solutions space
associated with prices of production is similar to that associated
with classical labour values.
In the latter part of the paper, a sample of reproduction schemes
is simulated over time, under assumptions of capital movement,
to see whether such systems dynamically converge on prices of production.
It is found that some converge, and some fail to converge
3D oil reservoir visualisation using octree compression techniques utilising logical grid co-ordinates
Octree compression techniques have been used for several years for compressing large three dimensional
data sets into homogeneous regions. This compression technique is ideally suited to datasets
which have similar values in clusters. Oil engineers represent reservoirs as a three dimensional grid
where hydrocarbons occur naturally in clusters. This research looks at the efficiency of storing these
grids using octree compression techniques where grid cells are broken into active and inactive regions.
Initial experiments yielded high compression ratios as only active leaf nodes and their ancestor, header
nodes are stored as a bitstream to file on disk. Savings in computational time and memory were possible
at decompression, as only active leaf nodes are sent to the graphics card eliminating the need of
reconstructing the original matrix. This results in a more compact vertex table, which can be loaded
into the graphics card quicker and generating shorter refresh delay times
Guided Filtering based Pyramidal Stereo Matching for Unrectified Images
Stereo matching deals with recovering quantitative
depth information from a set of input images, based on the visual
disparity between corresponding points. Generally most of the
algorithms assume that the processed images are rectified. As
robotics becomes popular, conducting stereo matching in the
context of cloth manipulation, such as obtaining the disparity
map of the garments from the two cameras of the cloth folding
robot, is useful and challenging. This is resulted from the fact of
the high efficiency, accuracy and low memory requirement under
the usage of high resolution images in order to capture the details
(e.g. cloth wrinkles) for the given application (e.g. cloth folding).
Meanwhile, the images can be unrectified. Therefore, we propose
to adapt guided filtering algorithm into the pyramidical stereo
matching framework that works directly for unrectified images.
To evaluate the proposed unrectified stereo matching in terms of
accuracy, we present three datasets that are suited to especially
the characteristics of the task of cloth manipulations. By com-
paring the proposed algorithm with two baseline algorithms on
those three datasets, we demonstrate that our proposed approach
is accurate, efficient and requires low memory. This also shows
that rather than relying on image rectification, directly applying
stereo matching through the unrectified images can be also quite
effective and meanwhile efficien
Information technology: gateway to direct democracy in China and the world
The world watches as China moves towards greater democracy. The question in everyone's minds, including Chinese themselves, is āwhat model will China arrive at, at the journey's end?ā There are many lessons to be learnt from other countries, some positive (Tanzania) and some negative (Laos). The United States has no doubts about the āgoodnessā of its own model but their unthinking belief in the superiority of their model should not be accepted at face value. The Chinese government and people will understandably be considering various different models very carefully, so that they can choose the best possible model for their country, and their own context. In this paper we will consider why current Western models of constitution should be viewed with caution by China as it attempts to move towards an improved socialist democracy. The paper considers the electronic voting system used in the US presidential elections, and draws attention to the opportunities for vote rigging that this type of electronic voting facilitates. It also looks at models of democracy used in the ancient world, and compares these with modern systems. Finally, it presents a secure and anonymous mechanism for electronic voting on issues of concern to the population. We conclude by sounding a note of caution about the dangers of plebiscites being used as rubber stamps by dictators if there are inadequate controls over who puts issues to the vote
HandiVote: simple, anonymous, and auditable electronic voting
We suggest a set of procedures utilising a range of technologies by which a major democratic deļ¬cit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that this holds considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control
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