Even in Production for Dasein, where the Work-Standard is employed and its performance documented under Command-Obedience Account Bookkeeping, the concepts of Inventories and Accounts Receivable/Payable will continue to exist in name only. Rather than recording the movements of Kapital and Schuld, they will instead be recording the contributions of Arbeit and the generation of Geld. Any movements of existing Actual Geld will also be recorded as well.

Revisiting Accounts Receivable/Payable

Under the Work-Standard, an “Accounts Receivable” refers to someone or an Enterprise receiving Actual Geld from someone else, another Enterprise, or the Council State. We already know that transactional sales and the Accounts Reconcilable are two examples of where the Accounts Receivable are relevant. Another is the receiving of Actual Geld from the Council State, which entails the Council State allocating Actual Geld from its State Budget to the State Fund of the Enterprise. The State Fund tied to a given Enterprise is where its Actual Geld is kept for all its past, current, and future expenditures.

Conversely, the “Accounts Payable” denotes someone or an Enterprise paying Actual Geld to somebody else, another Enterprise, or the Council State. Whenever somebody spends Actual Geld, it counts as an Accounts Payable, representing the transfer of Actual Geld from their accounts to another account, which happens to be the recipient’s Accounts Receivable. Any Actual Geld owed to somebody else or to the Council State counts as Accounts Payable.

Any Arbeit and Geld created from the LER and LERE Process are never reported as Accounts Payable because they always affect the State Revenues of the Council State. As stipulated in the various Entries of The Work-Standard (3^rd Ed.) and The Third Place (1^st Ed.), the Arbeit and Geld from the LER and LERE Process goes to the State Budget. Even though the Council State is required to ensure that all Enterprises have enough Actual Geld in their State Funds, the Council State is also required to ensure that it has enough Actual Geld left in its State Budget.

Regardless, any occurrence of the Accounts Receivable is going to be found on the Obedience Side because they are in final analysis a Revenue for the Enterprise. Any increase in the Revenues of the Enterprise will increase its State Fund. Likewise, any occurrence of the Accounts Payable will see a decrease in the State Fund of that Enterprise. The Accounts Payable denotes an Expense for the Enterprise because it is expected to pay Actual Geld to whoever it owes Actual Geld. Thus, it can be found on the Command Side. The table below is how they would typically appear in Command-Obedience Account Bookkeeping:

Does Inventory affect WI and WP Values?

The “Inventory” of an Enterprise generally refers to the Materiel, Land, Equipmentalities Buildings, Machinery, Vehicles, and so forth that are required for its everyday operations. The best way to internalize the significance of the Inventory is to realize that it holds the missing link to articulating how the Work-Productivity (WP) and Work-Intensity (WI) Values are factored into determining the Quality of Arbeit. In the First Edition of Work-Standard Accounting Practices and in other Treatises, the Values of WP and WI are not always made obvious as other variables used to find the Quality of Arbeit. Although the precedent was already assumed to be a given, it never hurts to delve into the matter further to mitigate any potential ambiguities.  

It is perhaps helpful that aspects of both Work-Productivity and Work-Intensity do appear in the Worksheet of Sociable Accounts (WSA), the Balance Sheet, the Income Statement, and the Workflow Statement. While the factors behind WP are controlled by factors beyond the control of the Accountant, let alone the Economic Planner, they can however determine the ones behind WI. Those variables related to the WI Value are the Resource Inputs, Production Costs, and Essential Costs of Expenses; and the Product Outputs and Non-Essential Costs of Spending.

An “Expense” is an expenditure required for the LER and LERE Processes, as part of contributing Arbeit to the Life-Energy Reserve and converting it into Geld. It represents the sum of “Resource Inputs,” “Essential Costs,” and “Production Costs.”

The Production Costs refer to how much Actual Geld was required to create a finished product or provide a rendered service. An Enterprise had to have Actual Geld from its own State Fund, which may be provided by the Council State or from any previous transactional sales in the past. Loans borrowed from the Reciprocal-Reserve Banking System or the issuances of NSFIs at the Kontore are other avenues to finance the State Fund. The production process itself required resource inputs from Equipmentalities like raw materials or spare components, hence the presence of Resource Inputs. It also had some Essential Costs such as water, electricity, fuel, heating and air conditioning, repairs, and maintenance, and so forth.

Aside from the Expenses, there can be additional expenditures that are secondary to the production process as their own variables in the WI Value. Here, “Spending” refers to expenditures related to the “Product Outputs” and “Non-Essential Costs.” In essence, they represent Actual Geld being spent on things not related to the LER and LERE Processes. Non-Essential Costs are additional costs not tied to the LER and LERE Processes. Some notable examples for Enterprises may include but are not limited to: upgrades to the production process; payments to train new personnel; payments to transport and deliver finished goods to the Tournament; purchases of material from the Tournament; payments to Investors of Fiefs and Work-Plans; any taxes owed to the Council State; and any Loans owed to the Reciprocal-Reserve Banking System.

Finally, the Product Outputs represent the cost of keeping finished goods in storage. Some products tend to last longer than others, resulting in the effects of “Depreciation” to happen less often and less likely. The effects of Depreciation add toward the Product Outputs because these finished goods have yet to be sold off and the Enterprise is losing Actual Geld from keeping them for far longer than they need to be. This Depreciation is not to be mistaken for the Currency Depreciation that affects Actual Geld or the Prices governing the goods and services at the Tournament.

The general idea is that each Enterprise is financing the continuation of its production processes by drawing Actual Geld from its State Fund, which relies primarily on transactional sales at the Tournament and any additional Actual Geld from the Council State. The Enterprise spends Actual Geld on everything it needs to maintain everyday operations. It may end up spending more because finished products are losing Value as they are not being sold at the Tournament. Any additional expenditure from Non-Essential Costs may increase the overall WI Value.

This leaves with the elusive WP Value, which by its own nature is arguably influenced by the Work-Standard’s “Reciprocal Theory of Value (RTV)” than the “Work Theory of Money (WTM).” Compared to the variables behind the WI Value and every other variable required to find the Quality of Arbeit (as well as the Quality of Geld), WP Value is always known to the Accountant. The State Commissariats of Wages and Price wield the Command Responsibility of determining the WP Values at the behest of different Enterprises under a functioning Council Democracy. In essence, the WP Value is influenced by how important or strategically vital the associated production process is to the State, Totality, and Self.

An average production process involves Land, Buildings, Tools, Machinery, Equipmentalities like raw materials and components, and Vehicles. It is significant that all the other variables associated with finding the Quality of Arbeit, specifically the ones that not Expenses or Spending, pertain to how many people are directly participating, the established “Mechanization Rate (MR),” and what other effects or “Force Multipliers” were involved.

Put another way, the WP Value is defined as the sum of Life-Energy emanating from the “Productive Forces” and the “Productive Properties.” People exert Life-Energy into the Productive Properties and the Productive Forces to give Work-Productivity its associated Value. If the Productive Properties are physical, tangible objects required to produce a finished good or provide rendered services, then how should the State Commissariats define (or perhaps, redefine) the concept of the Productive Forces under the Work-Standard?

We can discern the Values of Land, Buildings, Tools, Machinery, and Vehicles. As the above equation demonstrates, the Productive Properties should be the Values of everything required for a particular production process and any Depreciation that may diminish their Values.

The Values tied to each aspect of the Productive Properties will always be made readily apparent to the Accountant, who can obtain them from the Administrator, Delegate, Economic Planner, Inspector, or some combination of all four. The Accountant can even discern how much Depreciation occurred as the result of constant usage over the years and their subsequent loss of Values. Unlike Currency Depreciation and more like the Depreciation of Product Outputs, the Depreciation of the Productive Properties is unavoidable.

However, without knowing the Value of the Productive Forces, the Accountant cannot know the WP Value. Therefore, it is only fitting that the Value of the Productive Forces are decided by the Totality vis-à-vis the State Commissariats within a functioning Council Democracy. The State Commissars are the ones who set the Values of the Productive Forces, which the Accountant combines with the known Values of the Productive Properties to yield the WP Value. Obviously, the WP Value is going to be higher than the WI Value.

Everyone involved in any production process, not just the Accountant, wants to keep their WI Values low to ensure that their Life-Energy is not being squandered on what may otherwise be considered as “Meaningless Work.” At the same time, everyone involved also wants to know that they are performing “Meaningful Work” for the Totality and the State. From here, we can conclude that higher WP Values are correlated with perceived high levels of Meaningful Work by everyone involved in the production process. Lower WP Values reflect signs of Meaningless Work.

The implications here will become noticeable to the average Customer in the Tournament whenever they decide to purchase something from an Enterprise. Certain things cost more because they are prized by the Totality or because there are too many difficulties associated with producing something. Anything that costs less is due to the production process being able to sustain high Volumes of transactional sales at high Frequencies. It is even possible for the Council State to be influencing the Prices vis-à-vis the WP and WI Values of an Enterprise’s production process so that products are more affordable at the Tournament.

Categories: Compendium, Work-Standard Accounting Practices

Tags: Accounting, Bookkeeping, Economics, Finance, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Socialist Finance, Taxes, Third Place, Work-Standard, Work-Standard Accounting Practices