@GeorgeNtoulos Value is not necessarily desired. I can value a prosthetic limb abstractly because it has the ability to improve life and reduce suffering, but I hardly desire it personally. A wouldn't buy a prosthetic limb for a $1, because I don't need one, though the market might value it at 50$, what am I going to do with it? Spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a $10 profit?

On top of that, even if I could make a $10 profit, I'd rather spend it the time reading because I prefer research to profit. And what about addiction? I might desire doing drugs, but I would actually pay someone to stop me from doing them. Now, what I desire is might have a negative value...

And what about my wedding ring? It might have an objective value of $10 and yet I'll sacrifice $100 if I lose it. Does that mean I value it 10 times more compared to the same ring from the same company that I didn't buy? No, because the other ring isn't even worth $10 to me, since I wouldn't value it at all...

I think what you need to do is wrap your mind around the failure of homo economicus. Humans are NOT rational creatures by nature. Some of us are more predisposed to using reason, but cognitive biases weigh heavily on our thinking...

As far as ethics is concerned, by definition, an ethical proposition would be one whose content would be about behavior and effects on a fellow human being, so when a value-laden decision is made in economics, it's a function of the agent whether or not it's also an economical one...

Right now, with Covid-19, some politicians in the US have suggested that it's okay for old people to die to keep the economy from crashing. Obviously, making profits at the expense of human life IS an ethical decision. Should I make an extra $500 by working a few days if I spread the virus asymptomatically and kill even one other person?

Is a $10,000 diamond that I can make a profit of $1,000 dollars on really worth $10,000 if I know it's a blood diamond? So questions of economic value do have an ethical component, but often economic value and fractional mercantilism is practiced precisely to isolate our long-term interests from our short-term ones...

So, once again, value is heavily subjective. If I come from a pro-labor family, and I refuse to save $10 at the store Walmart which fights organized labor, what's the real cost of the $5 product? Objectively, it's $5. Subjectively, it might be $105 to me, because any all profits might undermine my economic security inherent in collective bargaining.

Lastly, money can be a curse. Many people who win the lottery in the US quickly find their friends and money gone, because of the responsibility that money through it's power possesses. Surely you're aware of Damocles and his suspended sword. How does one value the crown?

@JD Is the market anythink more than a mental abstraction? it troubles me to have a mental abstraction "owning" "posesing" a second mental abstraction. If you didn't desire the prosthetic limb you would not purchase it willingly. I define free-will under the exact(identical) circumstances. Free will is irrelevant to the absence of alternative choices.

@JD If you were amputated and your only chance of walking was the prosthetic limb you would probably desire a prosthetic limb. You personally under the circumstances you are value it less than 1 dollar but they are amputated and can't walk without it while you( hopefully) are not amputated and can walk freely and as such they value it more than 50 dollars. You would not want to sacrifice what you could buy with 1 dollar but they want to sacrifice what they could buy with 50 dollars.

@JD Why should time be excluded from having a value? Why should reading be excluded from having a value? Everything has its opportunity cost( the value of the best alternative, for everything but the best alternative while for the best alternative its just the value of the second best)

@JD You might desire doing drugs but since you are paying someone to stop you from doing them you probably value stopping it( implications your health, social status, etc) more than you value (doing drugs + whatever you could buy(best alternative) if you weren't spending resources(financial,physical,temporal) in stoping it)

@JD About your wedding ring that is why I question the notion of an objective and intersubjective value. There can easily be a metaphysical prohibition to do any opperation other than addition and subtraction. Why should fiat currency have a linear utility( constant marginal value)?

@JD Wasn't there trade and economy without a commonly accepted means for trade? What is stoping me from bartering now? Isn't trade a behaviour? Even crime and punishment could have a value. I will only commit a crime if the expected value of the crime is more that the expected value of the punishment( criminal, social, ethical/moral) and the value of the best alternative this criminal activity. Fyodor Dostoyevski Crime and Punisment's Raskolnikov was tortured by guilt.