A sudden though on the non-existence of value

[The Voice of Time]

Value is nothing but an extremely enduring and beloved fiction. Its manifestation varies between what people need it to be, and not by what it is, as it has no absolute referential existence in our reality and world. Its fictional existence is kept alive only by dynamically assigning and subtracting other real things to and from it, thereby diluting those real things while exploiting the reverence of value whose source of reverence comes from the accumulated real things it has consumed in its hellish hunger for self-perpetuation.

I believe that discarding the notion of value altogether can be very beneficial to ethics and even axiology (the later which critically depends on the notion of value in its very definition). Because by ridding oneself of the excess layer of abstraction which doesn't seem to serve any final cause but a linguistic one, one can get to the core and the matter of which we want to really discuss and speak about.

In dealing with economics... instead of speaking about value, why not speak of the things themselves... the exchanges and the usefulness. Instead of saying "this house is WORTH 1 million", why not say "this house can be exchanged for 1 million"?

Value seems to be an aether we have grown dependent on, but not out of general benefit, but out of communicative benefit. Like other concepts that change meaning from user to user and from situation to situation. It obscures what we are really dealing with, deceiving the seeker of truth.

In utilitarian ethics, instead of talking about the value that one person gets, let's talk about what it is that we want to give the person, and which he or she actually gets. Like, do we want to give the person something they have proportionally high use for? Then instead of saying we are giving them 50 utilitarian units of value, why not say we are giving them something which has a comparative usefulness quanta of 50? And so forth.

What you think? Does any such thing as "value" actually exist in nature? Or is it just another word for those things that actually do exist in nature but for which we want to have the communicative benefits with, and therefore exploit "value" when talking about?

[uwot]

I think value is probably based, ultimately, on the amount of work anyone is prepared to do for something, as Locke said. We know how many days work any item will 'cost' us and if someone is prepared to work that long and that hard, that is the 'value' they put on it. What is worrying is that with, for instance, the UK being in debt to a value of over a trillion pounds, the government has decided that several generations will be prepared to work in part just to service that debt. Mineral resources are finite, governments are gambling that our goodwill isn't. To my mind, it's a form of slavery.

[The Voice of Time]

Many people don't have a Lockian perspective on it, and some thoughts have nothing to do with economics whatsoever (consider value derived from ethical actions).

And why not talk about work, or effort, if those are the things you want to talk about? Why conjure this artificial synonym?

If one were to understand the situation then, one would have to understand work, or effort, and not deal with "value", because value is misleading as it's only a synonym for a real thing then, which we can easily talk about.

[uwot]

Many people don't have a Lockian perspective on it, and some thoughts have nothing to do with economics whatsoever (consider value derived from ethical actions).

You are quite right, I was talking specifically about economic value, in spite of your original post. I think utilitarians have tried to create a calculus for ethics, personally I don't think it is workable in any detailed format. To my mind things are broadly good or bad, but it gets very messy, very quickly if you argue why, or how much.

And why not talk about work, or effort, if those are the things you want to talk about? Why conjure this artificial synonym?

I think it's to do with storage and trading. In our hunter gatherer days, our work was almost immediately rewarded with what we required. As agriculture developed, societies grew and the means to store commodities became more sophisticated, storing and trading them became work in itself. Which has more 'value', producing, storing or trading? Currently, very little value is placed on production; it is the traders that make the money.

If one were to understand the situation then, one would have to understand work, or effort, and not deal with "value", because value is misleading as it's only a synonym for a real thing then, which we can easily talk about.

It's not my field, but off the top of my head, 'value' is pretty much a synonym for 'what we are prepared to tolerate'.

[henry quirk]

I'm walkin', mindin' my own bee's wax, flicking through the archive of old messages on my cell phone, when a loon from the alley barrels at me with murder in his eyes.

I spy a length of wood on the ground (an old broom handle)...I snatch it up and beat the fuck out of the loon.

Had the loon not come barreling out of the alley, I wouldn't have noticed the broom handle, or -- if I had -- I wouldn't have given it much thought.

As the loon 'did' come barreling out of the alley, my attention (my value-ing) shifted from my cell-phone to an old broom handle.

What I draw from (or, intentionally place in) this example...

-The value of a thing (or a person, or an idea) is context-sensitive, circumstance-specific, subjective, idiosyncratic.

*There are no universal or absolute values (or value-ing [or standard of value or value-ing]).

-The value of a thing is intimately, inextricably, connected to the needs or wants of the valuer.

A body only values that which he or she has need of, or desire for.

-Value (value-ing) is an activity performed in an on-going way by the valuer, not an intrinsic quality of a person, thing, or idea.


Fundamentally: value (value-ing) is where a body chooses to focus his or her attention (for whatever reason discernible by the valuer).









*which, of course, is why axiology is hooey