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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from? Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves.

And it is trivial to see one’s self deriving great value from things like eating fresh fruit and produce and drinking clean water, but not paying anywhere near its “value” for it.

Edit: replace the word value with utility in my comment to get a clearer idea of what I am trying to convey. Value is too vague of an idea to use for this topic.

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> Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from?

Basic economics.

> Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves.

Demand curve is marginal (internalized) value @ quantity, so saying that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves is exactly saying that they are a function of value at market-clearing quantity, plus telling you where markey-clearing quantity comes from.

“Value” is subjective - the price is derived from the market-defined value. The OP is talking about the value they perceive their work to be.

In that sense, prices are not a function of an individual’s perceived value of work.

> “Value” is subjective

Correct. This is the law of demand, and why price curves slope down with most goods (luxury goods excluded).

Basic economics assumes a functional and competitive market. The majority of markets in America no longer fit this criteria - today's corporate environment is closer to neo-feudal than capitalist; if we want to return to "true" capitalism, we need a lot stronger anti-merger and monopoly busting efforts.

I highly recommend listening to "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber on the observed inverse relationship between pay and [actual] value (if we're talking about societal value, for example). There are exceptions to the rule, but the correlation is quite strong.

Right, but as an employee, the demand curve is your employers, not the customers.

How do you determine value? I think you have it backwards.

As I write in my edit, I do not know what the word “value” really means, so but if we replace it with utility, then we see that we pay prices based on the options we have, not based on the utility it gives us.

For example, paying $0.02 per gallon for clean, potable water, which surely one can agree has extremely high utility since it allows us to survive. But also paying $100 for a Christmas tree, which has lower utility. This is because we can get water for cheaper and the lowest price for the Christmas tree we could find was $100, but if water stopped being available for $0.02, then you bet people would pay $100 and even $1,000 for a gallon of water.

Does that mean water started having more utility? Not according to the definition economics used. Whether or not water became more valuable depends on how you are using the word value, so that is why I think it is not really a good word for discussions of how prices are determined.

You can sell a service to a business that is crucial to their continued operations all day long, but if someone else is willing to sell to them for less, then do not expect to get paid based on how “valuable” you are to the buyer.

I think economists use the concept of "marginal utility" to solve the problem you describe. If you already had 10 glasses of water, the marginal utility of having another drink is very low. If you haven't had anything to drink for two days, the marginal utility is high.

Your own example should make it obvious that "utility" is not a good way to think about value. Should people pay 100$ per glass of water, even if they live next to a river of fresh water? It wouldn't lead to good economic results to set prices that way.

I think anything else than "what people are willing to pay" will ultimately lead to bad results. For example the misguided "value theory of labor" keeps messing things up and leading people down the destructive path to communism.

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