Daniel Davies:
> "Value" is not a concept reified by consumer choice
> theory, which I think is part of the whole big problem
> of economics. To paraphrase John Mackie on the
> doctrine of second effects (I think), while the
> presence of a theory of value has been the corruption
> of most Marxist economics, the absence of one has been
> the downfall of most non-Marxist economics.
Max Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> wrote:
> > Ironically, brand as value is a more social type of
> > consumption
> > than, say, $2K stereo systems in custom designed
> > music rooms.
> > You don't buy something with a swoosh to wear in
> > your living
> > room; you buy it for purposes of display. Of
> > course, the implied
> > social interaction is a warped aspect of capitalist
> > culture.
Daniel Davies:
> It's also something that, notoriously, is incredibly
> difficult to account for in a neoclassical framework.
> The idea of social, positional or similar relational
> kinds of consumption is so orthogonal to the GDP
> concept that it probably makes as much sense to
> include brands as exclude them. But there's still a
> gut feel which tells you that, since it's impossible
> for everyone to have a positional good, there's
> something funny about it.
So, what is value? There seems to be a big problem in the concept(s). Brand names clearly impart an ability to raise prices regardless (to some extent) of whether they are related to physical, biological, or technical properties -- if you like Nike, consider Maxwell House or Microsoft. The aura which many consumers clearly _value_ and enjoy is not necessarily connected to anything _in_ the product -- the most extreme example being the pet rock or gold treated solely as a store of (some sort of) value.
On the other hand, there's the value present in a machine tool which appears to be there because (1) information and physical energy were applied to various materials and (2) the resultant assemblage can be used to do things in the world which would not be possible without the tool.
At one time, one could connect the second kind of value to the first through biology: someone liked bread because they needed to eat, the scythe helped them get the wheat to make the bread, therefore the scythe had value, etc. But it seems as if in the contemporary world value is escaping from this kind of connection in a significant way.
It's like the mind-body problem rising from the dead.