Sunday 5 February 2017

The Science of Value



'Value', it strikes me, is one of the most important things worth trying to understand. How can it be that this thing, or this action, is judged by humans to be worth more than, or less than, or the same as, that other thing? Make sense of that, any I'll make sense of much about how the world works,

This, I suppose, is the study they call 'economics', and I'd like to understand it. I'd like to understand it for the same reason I like to understand other things - so that I'll end up with a sort-of model in my head which lets me predict what's going to happen next. That way life will have fewer mistakes, more safety and greater comfort. I'll get more out for less in.

But I'm reluctant to go to Economists for the answers - I'm afraid they've demonstrated rather too often that they're pretty incompetent at prediction.

So, just as I've tried to do for the science of human understanding broadly called 'philosophy' I'll have a go at doing it all by myself. I might get somewhere, I more probably won't. But I will stand a good chance of finding out some new ways of thinking.

VALUE
Value is an entirely human construct.
Value is a measure of the extent to which one human will go into debt to another to obtain advantage.

MONEY, WEALTH & CASH
Value is measured in terms of Wealth, Money and Cash.
Wealth, Money and Cash are different things.

There IS no such thing as a Free Market
All markets are manipulated. It just depends on - who?  Very often "I want a free market" means "I want to manipulate the market my way"

That's as far as I've got.