> What's the "value" of your receptionist? Well how do you measure that? Simple: get rid of her, and have your developers answer the phones. The decrease in pro

> What's the "value" of your receptionist? Well how do you measure that? Simple: get rid of her, and have your developers answer the phones. The decrease in productivity from that is the value of her position That value is not absolute. That's just the value to me as his or her current employer. The same receptionist would have different value to an employer with a different cost structure. This is why an intermediary like price is required. > The older I get, the more I think that "value" (our social evaluation of worth) should be based on nothing more than hours of labor. > An hour of labor from someone with a 130-IQ might carry a higher price on the market than an hour of labor from someone with a 90-IQ 1. These two statements are fundamentally at odds. The mere existence of a market price directly implies that some number of market participants have made their own judgments about the value (to them) of that hour of time. 2. "hours of labor == value" is the fallacy behind make-work programs where people effectively dig ditches and then fill them back up. There's nothing changed when they're done; how do you capture that economically?