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What are the sources or bases of Value?

You've left out one critical factor, which is the single most important driver of economics today:

Value is used as a social/Darwinian game to define a pecking order and hierarchy.

In conventional economics the accumulation of this kind of 'value' becomes an end in itself - not because of any objective use-value, but as a social convention.

Put very simply, value is used as a store of 'face'. High-face individuals are exalted, low-face individuals are punished. Many business and political transactions are based on creating an appearance of face and 'value' where there's no objective reason for same.

Similarly high-value collectives - cities, corporations, nation states - are exalted, and low-value collectives are attacked and destroyed.

Current economic understanding has the scientific sophistication of a wolf pack. So much time, energy and effort goes into status plays that there's very little left over for useful activity.

No alternative economic system can work unless it deprecates this mental model and replaces it with something more objectively sophisticated.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Feb 26th, 2012 at 07:54:25 PM EST
ThatBritGuy:
deprecates this mental model

or depreci*a*tes it?

can one aprecate things? capital appreciates us as we accumulate it.

so deprecate money before it desecrates us...

sophisticated objectivism, eh? mature social  capitalism?

hmm

magisterially pithy comment, especially the phrase about the wolf pack.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sun Feb 26th, 2012 at 10:12:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Depricate - from Wiki:
In mainstream English, the infinitive "to deprecate" means, simply, "to strongly disapprove of (something)". It derives from the Latin verb deprecare, meaning "to ward off (a disaster) by prayer"

It is economic models with the sophistication of a wolf pack that we need to deprecate. But this usage is invidious to wolf packs, which actually exhibit long term survival capability in the environment in which they evolved and we cannot say that about 'mainstream economics.
'.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Feb 27th, 2012 at 08:51:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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