you subsume anything that might be considered valuable into the catch-all category of 'utility,' Sort of. There's two issues: 1. Can you draw a distinction be

you subsume anything that might be considered valuable into the catch-all category of 'utility,' Sort of. There's two issues: 1. Can you draw a distinction between things you "need" and things that are useful to you? "Needs" is just a rough quantification of utility. The problem is that it isn't as useful. What's the opposite of needs? The opposite of utility is disutility. Labour is disutility. 2. It's key when thinking about this kind of stuff to distinguish "employment" or "producing value" from labour. Labour is something you don't want to do. It's disutility. If you want to do it then it isn't labour. Even if you're getting paid. So it clears things up to just say "disutility" instead. and then suggest that the present arrangement maximizes 'utility.' I didn't do that. does our economy properly value leisure? That question is completely meaningless to me. First you have to explain to me how something can have a "proper" value (there's no such concept in my understanding). Second you have to explain how an "economy" can value things and what that means. I only know what it means for people to value things. EDIT: note that my critique is only for the blogger's interpretation of Marx/Keynes. I didn't read the linked Keynes essay but I suspect I doesn't have this kind of error. "Needs" can't rise because they are infinite. They have always been infinite and they will always be infinite.