Talk:Factor e Farm Energy Cycle

I strongly suggest measuring labor by time rather than calories burned. Level of skill per person is another factor that makes both calories and time suspect, but I believe time is less so than calories. Labor time is far easier to measure than calories burned. It makes sense to measure energy usage of machines because they are designed specifically for a task, whereas human calories may be burned for reasons other than labor tasks. For example, a person may have a broken leg while laboring while the body directs calories to the broken leg. If a labor economy where measured in calories and a laborer where paid in calories directed toward a task, the earner would have made more before the ailment than after. Another: a medical doctor and a life long coal miner may burn the same amount of calories. You trust the medical doctor; even if he may burn more calories per hour than the coal miner. Is that sensible?

A more accurate approach may be value (based on raw supply/demand) per task performed to generate a product. If we assume labor is the only scarce good in this economy, a price tag is only used to compensate labor. Of course, I think we're all in agreement that we would rather not have money in the chain at all and that labor is ideally voluntary without financial payment. Therefore, labor is only compensated for a community that is not motivated otherwise to do anything.

Is that sensible?

-Nathan