From what I recall, this distinction was the subject of vigorous debate among early economists formulating theories of value, especially among the Austrians. Th

From what I recall, this distinction was the subject of vigorous debate among early economists formulating theories of value, especially among the Austrians. The “textbook” undergraduate explanation is that diversity of productive endowments leads to gains from specialization and trade, but the subjective theory of value perhaps enriches this notion: the “cost” of using up a scarce productive resource may be subjectively determined, which means that two humans who appear to have the same productive endowment nonetheless may have different preferences of what to produce. Also, your comment about package deals strongly reminds me of stuff I recently read in Thomas Sowell’s *Knowledge and Decisions.