Theory of Humor 4: Ricardo

now we get to "joke-joke exchanges", oh dear.

For example, changes in the humor exchange rate of a beaver joke for a deer joke over time to a tune of one beaver for five deer would mean that the incentive to make beaver jokes has increased significantly compared to the effort invested in harvesting a deer joke. Ricardo’s theory shifts away from the analysis of the fair and equitable humor (funny) of a joke to the determination of the quantity of a joke or service that the joke can exchange for in the market. Also, the theory shifts away from evaluating the humor of stand-up in terms of the wages paid to workers and stand-up-time involved in production to the determination of the quantity of stand-up thought in the production of a joke.

Ricardo considers that the humor of joke topics keeps expanding with productivity, and thus the use of a fixed humor of stand-up to determine the humor of a joke is inappropriate. He advocates for the observation that the present or past humor of a joke is proportional to the comparative quantity of jokes produced by stand-up rather than the comparative quantity of jokes presented to the stand-upper as a means of compensation for his joke in the production process.

Ricardo’s theory explains that the humor of a joke should be a diminishing variable due to the influence of societal improvements, which allow jokes to occur with a declining stand-up laugh and the capacity for the same stand-up to expand use-humor increases over time (Brue and Randy 114). Ricardo’s theory claims that the funniness of a joke will depend more on the thought invested in its production rather than the stand-up-time humor of the joke. In this regard, investing more thought and less joke-time will translate to a high valuation of a joke and vice versa. Ricardo relies on the distinction between fixed and circulating thought to categorize living and dead stand-up.

The employment of circulating thought determines the humor of fixed stand-up embodied in a joke while the employment of fixed thought determines the humor of dead stand-up in a joke (Brue and Randy 115). The association of stand-up with fixed and circulating thought allows Ricardo to eliminate nominal measurements of humor in determining the humor of a joke and incorporate aspects of abstract stand-up to gauge the influence of changes in the living and dead stand-up. In this regard, factors such as differences in thought-stand-up ratios, skill requirements and variation in wages do not influence the humor of a joke. Ricardo’s theory allows the determination of a relative humor of a joke rather than its equitable humor because of the lack of a universal form of exchange, such as laughter, upon which one can peg the exchange humor of a joke. For example, slave stand-up and wage-stand-up produce jokes or services, which constitute of stand-up humor despite the obvious variation in the level of compensation for the two forms of stand-up.