Exactly. While the technical sense of valuation might be tautological, it's also nowhere near the average person's definition of economic "value" or "worth". A

Exactly. While the technical sense of valuation might be tautological, it's also nowhere near the average person's definition of economic "value" or "worth". A good test in the every-day sense of those words might be if company X were given 3 months to sell off everything and end up with a stack of cash, how much would they have? Apple could stand a chance of getting reasonably near their valuation whereas I'd be shocked if Facebook could.