Not said in so many words, but what’s lurking in this piece is the idea that “value” is often not measurable in dollars (or any currency). “Value” is often not an economic concept. Even economists (the good ones) recognize that not all value, and not all “rational choices,” are based on economics.
Great stuff...I too am about 15% closer to a true understanding of "Value", but that's not why I am weighing in...
The Eagles are outstanding, but God help me you are spot on, Led Zeppelin is (by far) the best band that has ever walked the Earth. Not a single bad song in their entire catalog. Thanks for the "link" to the 1969 Live Video's, now the rest of my day is shot - can't pull my eyes away.
Basically, water seems to be more inherently valuable than diamonds because without water, we'd all die. But it's possible for the market cap of diamonds to be greater than the market cap of all water. Do we really value diamonds above water?
The novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" revolves around the narrator's attempt to posit a workable definition of "quality." This effort proceeds along similarly maddening avenues hinted at by your brief attempt to grapple with "value."
> If I had to guess, I would bet that the aggregate demand for slaves throughout human history up to this point is positive.
I don't think so. Slaves probably valued not being slaves more than slave owners valued having slaves. There are surely exceptions with well-fed personal slaves, but overall most mine worker slaves probably had a lot more negative demand than people had for the products they produced.
Of course, slaves didn't have the means to convert their desires to economic pressure, so from that perspective you're still right.
Not sure what this means, but I like and still listen to both Led Zep and The Eagles. I’m enough of a Led Zeppelin fan to notice Jimmy Page was playing a Fender Telecaster instead of a Gibson Les Paul in the video you linked to. I also enjoy The Eagles’ harmonies. Both have value for me.
I listen to Rock, Jazz, Blues, Classical and even some Country music and consider myself to have fairly eclectic musical taste.
On the other hand, if anything resembling Rap or Hip Hop starts playing in one of my playlists I nearly break a finger hitting “Suggest less like this” and “Skip” on my phone, yet I know many people who actually enjoy this type of “music” and seek it out.
Probably because I’m an old white guy, with tastes set in the late ‘60s & early ‘70s.
I don’t know if there is any such thing as intrinsic value. To each his own.
Value has a little bit of that "I know it where I see it energy". I have a theory about values that they should be read in other people as sort of a plumage or display. Ultimately there is no way to measure the value of Hotel California compared to Stairway to Heaven. The passion and the intensity that we would use to defend or otherwise defend our opinion would be a display to other people about what sort of person we were. This means that the things we value can be used like peacock feathers to attract others or like the stripes of a toxic frog, warning off people from messing with it. A value isnt really a value until it is expressed. Few people act on values they don't in someway live up to and most of those we call psychopaths.
Good effort. I attacked this problem 50 years ago in an article in the 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦 in an article titled "Are Some Aesthetic Judgments Empirically True?" My answer was "yes", which brought me immediately under thunderous fire from the 𝐽𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑒𝑠𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑟𝑡 𝐶𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚. My approach was different from yours, but analogous: consider the difference between "I like this X" and "This is a good X". "like" (as is "popular") is a psycho-socio predicate. "good" is a value predicate. To back up either, you must use different kinds of arguments. One especially good approach you circle around rather nicely: we have clear ideas of what "not-good" means. If we can carve out a sufficiently robust volume of "not-goods" what's left is "good". That's what I did in my article, and it pissed the holy shit out of the artsy-fartsy lemme tell you.
Love your stuff. Keep it up, slay the phonies, eh?!
Putting aside all the interesting points others have made in the comments, I wonder if by your metric something can have value while also being negative in some way?
I might read an article I hate, or a book I hate, but I I come out of that experience changed more than if I read something so generic it makes no impression on me. Conflicting views challenge my own opnion, they may make me harden or soften in places, or at the very least more open to different points of view, rather than wrapping myself in a bubble. Bad fiction makes me realise what type of prose or plot I treasure, and may influence future reading (or writing) choices. There is even enjoyment in picking it apart, in the same way people can enjoy period dramas because they can point out all the inaccurate clothing choices.
Your experience of The Eagles music enables you to write this article, and thus, I cheekily suggest, your dislike has added value to your life.
I actually low-key don't think flourishing should be an objective component of value.
The flourishing of humanity has its own set of pros and cons (ask any extinct species).
Perhaps instead of flourishing we could look at improving. Improving the state-of-the-art doesn't necessarily mean flourishing/expanding/succeeding. Improving is a deeply personal take on what makes something better than it was before.
Let each of us determine what is good/bad, and let each of us determine what would be better than what we have had in the past. And let's let that be a component of value.
As an economics professor, the main thing that stands out to me is that you don't really have a concept of cost here. You start to approach it with the idea of "negative value", but you're basically defining it as people finding something's existence actively bad, rather than directly imposing costs on someone to create the thing. To use one of your examples, I think if we include the costs imposed on enslaved people themselves (I just want to note here that I'm aware that's an extremely clinical way to describe something horrifying), then slavery throughout human history is extremely negative value. Incorporating this concept, which essentially shifts your idea of value from "aggregate demand" to "aggregate surplus", I think largely obviates the need to include the wishy-washy "for human flourishing" caveat.
I think what you're looking for is utility in a utilitarian (or consequentialist) moral system. I think that how you assign utility to states of the world is up to you, but once you've decided on a system, you can then objectively measure how good things are according to that system.
Heaven's Gate. I am old enough to remember watching Siskel and Ebert rip that one to shreds. Years later, as an adult, I watched some of that hideous sepia-toned abortion. When everybody started roller skating I couldn't help myself, started singing "Xaaaanaduuuuuu, Xanaduuuwoowoo"
But I have not watched Midnight Sky or The Burlyman. Are you saying they are equally bad, or are they ranked in some order of negative value with Troy McClure?
Not said in so many words, but what’s lurking in this piece is the idea that “value” is often not measurable in dollars (or any currency). “Value” is often not an economic concept. Even economists (the good ones) recognize that not all value, and not all “rational choices,” are based on economics.
Great stuff...I too am about 15% closer to a true understanding of "Value", but that's not why I am weighing in...
The Eagles are outstanding, but God help me you are spot on, Led Zeppelin is (by far) the best band that has ever walked the Earth. Not a single bad song in their entire catalog. Thanks for the "link" to the 1969 Live Video's, now the rest of my day is shot - can't pull my eyes away.
You'd probably also be interested in the diamond/water paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value
Basically, water seems to be more inherently valuable than diamonds because without water, we'd all die. But it's possible for the market cap of diamonds to be greater than the market cap of all water. Do we really value diamonds above water?
Humanity could flourish by repurposing vicious dogs toward destroying Eagles albums.
The novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" revolves around the narrator's attempt to posit a workable definition of "quality." This effort proceeds along similarly maddening avenues hinted at by your brief attempt to grapple with "value."
> If I had to guess, I would bet that the aggregate demand for slaves throughout human history up to this point is positive.
I don't think so. Slaves probably valued not being slaves more than slave owners valued having slaves. There are surely exceptions with well-fed personal slaves, but overall most mine worker slaves probably had a lot more negative demand than people had for the products they produced.
Of course, slaves didn't have the means to convert their desires to economic pressure, so from that perspective you're still right.
Not sure what this means, but I like and still listen to both Led Zep and The Eagles. I’m enough of a Led Zeppelin fan to notice Jimmy Page was playing a Fender Telecaster instead of a Gibson Les Paul in the video you linked to. I also enjoy The Eagles’ harmonies. Both have value for me.
I listen to Rock, Jazz, Blues, Classical and even some Country music and consider myself to have fairly eclectic musical taste.
On the other hand, if anything resembling Rap or Hip Hop starts playing in one of my playlists I nearly break a finger hitting “Suggest less like this” and “Skip” on my phone, yet I know many people who actually enjoy this type of “music” and seek it out.
Probably because I’m an old white guy, with tastes set in the late ‘60s & early ‘70s.
I don’t know if there is any such thing as intrinsic value. To each his own.
Value has a little bit of that "I know it where I see it energy". I have a theory about values that they should be read in other people as sort of a plumage or display. Ultimately there is no way to measure the value of Hotel California compared to Stairway to Heaven. The passion and the intensity that we would use to defend or otherwise defend our opinion would be a display to other people about what sort of person we were. This means that the things we value can be used like peacock feathers to attract others or like the stripes of a toxic frog, warning off people from messing with it. A value isnt really a value until it is expressed. Few people act on values they don't in someway live up to and most of those we call psychopaths.
Good effort. I attacked this problem 50 years ago in an article in the 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦 in an article titled "Are Some Aesthetic Judgments Empirically True?" My answer was "yes", which brought me immediately under thunderous fire from the 𝐽𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑒𝑠𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑟𝑡 𝐶𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚. My approach was different from yours, but analogous: consider the difference between "I like this X" and "This is a good X". "like" (as is "popular") is a psycho-socio predicate. "good" is a value predicate. To back up either, you must use different kinds of arguments. One especially good approach you circle around rather nicely: we have clear ideas of what "not-good" means. If we can carve out a sufficiently robust volume of "not-goods" what's left is "good". That's what I did in my article, and it pissed the holy shit out of the artsy-fartsy lemme tell you.
Love your stuff. Keep it up, slay the phonies, eh?!
I’m just here for the Eagles hate.
Putting aside all the interesting points others have made in the comments, I wonder if by your metric something can have value while also being negative in some way?
I might read an article I hate, or a book I hate, but I I come out of that experience changed more than if I read something so generic it makes no impression on me. Conflicting views challenge my own opnion, they may make me harden or soften in places, or at the very least more open to different points of view, rather than wrapping myself in a bubble. Bad fiction makes me realise what type of prose or plot I treasure, and may influence future reading (or writing) choices. There is even enjoyment in picking it apart, in the same way people can enjoy period dramas because they can point out all the inaccurate clothing choices.
Your experience of The Eagles music enables you to write this article, and thus, I cheekily suggest, your dislike has added value to your life.
I actually low-key don't think flourishing should be an objective component of value.
The flourishing of humanity has its own set of pros and cons (ask any extinct species).
Perhaps instead of flourishing we could look at improving. Improving the state-of-the-art doesn't necessarily mean flourishing/expanding/succeeding. Improving is a deeply personal take on what makes something better than it was before.
Let each of us determine what is good/bad, and let each of us determine what would be better than what we have had in the past. And let's let that be a component of value.
Cheers!
The Midnight Sky references kill me every time
As an economics professor, the main thing that stands out to me is that you don't really have a concept of cost here. You start to approach it with the idea of "negative value", but you're basically defining it as people finding something's existence actively bad, rather than directly imposing costs on someone to create the thing. To use one of your examples, I think if we include the costs imposed on enslaved people themselves (I just want to note here that I'm aware that's an extremely clinical way to describe something horrifying), then slavery throughout human history is extremely negative value. Incorporating this concept, which essentially shifts your idea of value from "aggregate demand" to "aggregate surplus", I think largely obviates the need to include the wishy-washy "for human flourishing" caveat.
I think what you're looking for is utility in a utilitarian (or consequentialist) moral system. I think that how you assign utility to states of the world is up to you, but once you've decided on a system, you can then objectively measure how good things are according to that system.
Heaven's Gate. I am old enough to remember watching Siskel and Ebert rip that one to shreds. Years later, as an adult, I watched some of that hideous sepia-toned abortion. When everybody started roller skating I couldn't help myself, started singing "Xaaaanaduuuuuu, Xanaduuuwoowoo"
But I have not watched Midnight Sky or The Burlyman. Are you saying they are equally bad, or are they ranked in some order of negative value with Troy McClure?