The first view is that natural resources have no value but price, and the price of natural resources is the capitalization of land rent (Hu,1993);
The second view is to completely deny the proposition that natural resources are worthless. Among them, the representative exposition is: "Natural resources are valuable. This value depends on the usefulness, scarcity and development and utilization conditions of natural resources to human beings. We assume that the value and value theory of natural resources can be established on the basis of wealth theory, utility theory and land rent theory about natural resources.
The value or price of natural resources determined in this way should include two parts: one is the value of natural resources themselves; The second is the social investment value of natural resources. The former can be determined according to the theory of land rent, and the latter can be determined according to the theory of production price. ""The reproduction process of natural resources is the combination of natural reproduction process and social reproduction process.
According to the current theory of production value, it is wrong to consider only the social reproduction process and not the natural reproduction process. The pricing of natural resources should consider these two aspects, that is, according to the principle that the complete production price is equal to land rent plus cost plus profit. "(Li Jinchang et al., 1990).
The third view holds that under the premise of affirming the labor theory of value, natural resources have no value in the early stage of human economy and society, but they are valuable in the present age. The fourth view holds that land rent is the value of natural resources by linking it with intergenerational compensation. "Intergenerational relations related to natural resources can be summarized as follows:
The last substitute natural resources replaces or saves labor and capital, and the next substitute labor and capital saved by the previous generation replaces exhausted or degraded natural resources. The intergenerational equilibrium condition of natural resources is that the rent accumulated by contemporary people can compensate the future user cost. "
It expands Marx's labor theory of value from the perspective of intergenerational relations. Some scholars even put forward the multiple axiology or "comprehensive axiology" of natural resources, and think that natural resources have existence value, economic value and environmental value (Xu, 1995). Shen Dajun (1999) described the value of water resources as a value system including property right value, scarcity value and labor value.
The value theory of modern western economics is subjective utility axiology. China scholars who hold this view generally acquiesce. One of the main differences between Marx's labor theory of value and the utility theory of western economics is the value and price of natural resources. The comparison and synthesis of these two theories is one of the theoretical problems that need to be solved in resource economics.
Extended data
Marx's labor theory of value points out that land rent is the reward for using inelastic factors of production. It can be considered that the rent of resources (such as land, which can be leased to bring rent) is the service price of any resource that lacks supply flexibility. Assuming that resources can be leased to producers within the remaining service life, their owners can expect to obtain a series of rental income, and the discounted value of this series of rental income can be used to estimate the present value of this resource. The estimation model is established as follows:
Among them: Vt is the discounted value of future resource rental income in t years, that is, the present value of resource value in t period; QT is the expected output of each period; NT is the rent of unit resources; R is the discount rate.
In order to maximize the return on capital investment and continuously transfer capital between different factors of production until the profit rate achieved on each factor is equal, there should be:
Nt + 1 = Nt( 1 + r)
Further, we can get:
Comparing Vt and Vt+ 1, the total amount of mining in the two periods is not much different, and the unit rent Nt+ 1 = Nt( 1+r), we can find that the value or price of resources in t+ 1 period is higher than that in t period, which is explained by the increasing scarcity caused by consumption.