3 ms·

Value is a property of a market. If there is no market (like in free software because it's "free") or if people don't want to pay for it, there is no value. In

Value is a property of a market. If there is no market (like in free software because it's "free") or if people don't want to pay for it, there is no value. In other words, create things is not enough.

dredmorbius 11y ago
There are three independent concepts: cost, use value (I usually abbreviate this as "value"), and price, or exchange value (which you are terming value). There's rather more discussion of this in economic litereature than might be expected, both early (pre-Smith and 19th century) and contemporary. Trying to make all three of these agree is a bit of a problem. Economic orthodoxy variously tries to do this / pretends they do (and mind, "agree" != "equal"). Content has cost. There's time and effort necessary to create it. Content has value. It can improve, even drastically change, the lives of those it reaches. That cost may be negative as well -- disinformation or distraction, for exaple. What content doesn't have much of is exchange value -- it's difficult to draw walls, fences, boxes, or whatever else it is that prevents free access -- around content such that people should pay to get it. And doing that ... has its own sets of problems (generally: under-provisioning of content, particularly to the economically disadvantaged). Advertising essentially hijacks one content stream (that the audience seeks) with another (that the producer wants distributed). Advertising has value to the author, not audience, and so the author is willing to pay for it to be disseminated. This ... produces numerous perverse incentives. Crappy Web pages among them. But claiming that no market value (exchange value / price) means no use value, or no cost basis, is simply false. Common, but false.
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  It was in the context of the comment. "Therefore, in the course of the economic transactions (buying and selling) that constitute market exchange, people ascribe subjective values to the commodities (goods and services), which the buyers and the sellers then perceive as objective values, the market-exchange prices that people will pay for the commodities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism#Objectified_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism#Objectifie... It's not a personal point of view but it describes well the reality for most people.

dredmorbius 11y ago

There are three independent concepts: cost, use value (I usually abbreviate this as "value"), and price, or exchange value (which you are terming value). There's rather more discussion of this in economic litereature than might be expected, both early (pre-Smith and 19th century) and contemporary. Trying to make all three of these agree is a bit of a problem. Economic orthodoxy variously tries to do this / pretends they do (and mind, "agree" != "equal"). Content has cost. There's time and effort necessary to create it. Content has value. It can improve, even drastically change, the lives of those it reaches. That cost may be negative as well -- disinformation or distraction, for exaple. What content doesn't have much of is exchange value -- it's difficult to draw walls, fences, boxes, or whatever else it is that prevents free access -- around content such that people should pay to get it. And doing that ... has its own sets of problems (generally: under-provisioning of content, particularly to the economically disadvantaged). Advertising essentially hijacks one content stream (that the audience seeks) with another (that the producer wants distributed). Advertising has value to the author, not audience, and so the author is willing to pay for it to be disseminated. This ... produces numerous perverse incentives. Crappy Web pages among them. But claiming that no market value (exchange value / price) means no use value, or no cost basis, is simply false. Common, but false.

vmorgulis 11y ago
It was in the context of the comment. "Therefore, in the course of the economic transactions (buying and selling) that constitute market exchange, people ascribe subjective values to the commodities (goods and services), which the buyers and the sellers then perceive as objective values, the market-exchange prices that people will pay for the commodities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism#Objectified_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism#Objectifie... It's not a personal point of view but it describes well the reality for most people.