I know this wasn’t your main point, but money doesn’t have objective value, either, by that definition. It only has value in situations where you can trade it for other things. It’s extremely common to encounter such situations, so the limitation is pretty ignorable, but I suspect you’re at least as likely to encounter situations where money isn’t tradeable for goods as you are to encounter situations where your own preferences and values aren’t part of the context.
I used the money analogy because it has a convenient idea of value.
While debating about the use of that analogy, I had already considered it ironic that the US dollar hasn’t had “objective” value since it was disconnected from the value of gold in 1933. Not that gold has objective value unless you use it to make a conductor. But at the level, I start losing track of what I mean by ‘value’. Anyway, it is interesting that the value of the US dollar is exactly an example of humans creating value, echoing Alicorn’s comment.
Real money does have objective value relative to the party, since you can buy things on your way home, but no objective value outside contexts where the money can be exchanged for goods.
I know this wasn’t your main point, but money doesn’t have objective value, either, by that definition. It only has value in situations where you can trade it for other things. It’s extremely common to encounter such situations, so the limitation is pretty ignorable, but I suspect you’re at least as likely to encounter situations where money isn’t tradeable for goods as you are to encounter situations where your own preferences and values aren’t part of the context.
I used the money analogy because it has a convenient idea of value.
While debating about the use of that analogy, I had already considered it ironic that the US dollar hasn’t had “objective” value since it was disconnected from the value of gold in 1933. Not that gold has objective value unless you use it to make a conductor. But at the level, I start losing track of what I mean by ‘value’. Anyway, it is interesting that the value of the US dollar is exactly an example of humans creating value, echoing Alicorn’s comment.
Real money does have objective value relative to the party, since you can buy things on your way home, but no objective value outside contexts where the money can be exchanged for goods.