The labor theory of value is the idea that a commodity’s economic value is ultimately determined by the amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it. I'm not a Musk fanboy and I don't know what the idiot index is, but if he buys into the LTV, he's incorrect.

There are very very simple proofs to invalidate the LTV, for example the fact that two items requiring identical amounts of socially necessary labor can have very different prices. In my experience, I have only met one person who earnestly believed it (an old college classmate) and his basis was self-admittedly purely ideological. In the end, I think the most elegant way to think about it is to reverse the causal arrow. Labor does not create value; perceived value decides which labor was worth doing.

I asked ChatGPT this:

"who is the single one contemporary person who took labour theory of value seriously in an academic sense?"

ChatGPT: G.E Cohen.

(G.E Cohen is an Analytical Marxist BTW)

Here's what G.E Cohen has to say specifically on LTV:

1. "labour theory is, moreover, false" [1]

2. "The labour theory of value is not a suitable basis for the charge of exploitation laid against capitalism by Marxists, and the real foundation of that charge is something much simpler which, for reasons to be stated, is widely confused with the labour theory of value." [2]

[1] https://andrewmbailey.com/money/readings/cohen

[2] https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3128-the-labour-theory...

So here you have the one guy who took this flawed concept seriously, * from the side of Marxism * and then has to conclude that it is false.