Quote from: Zangelbert Bingledack on November 27, 2013, 11:27:57 AM

Quote from: Mike Christ on November 27, 2013, 03:14:21 AM

Is it possible for value to be objective?

Absolutely not. Valuation requires a valuer. It's not even coherent to speak of "objective value."

This is the interesting bit; we would refer to another subjective concept, i.e. morality, as objective if a supreme, all-knowing being could define what is correctly moral and what is incorrectly moral; however, many of us now agree that this is impossible and so even a concept of "objective morality" is still subjective, just decided from an opinion that is God or God-like, such as by an emperor, or by a democratic process; ultimately, in this fashion, it fails to represent an individual's morals, leading to such claims that those who go against what is commonly accepted as moral not as immoral, but simply without morality at all. Morality can become misshapen in this way, and though it can never truly represent the public, it can still be forced upon others; at any point in time that morality can be defined as objective, we can define a society's moral foundation, i.e. law and justice, as tyrannical.

So in the context of "objective valuation", no matter what kind of advancements we make in our abilities to decide just how valuable something is, it inevitably comes down to an opinion; this, however, can become muddled, just as Jesus preached objective morality and it stuck with people even to this day. Comparing this idea to the left-right parable, if objective morality is the right's response to controlling societal behavior (with liberties reserved for business), then the idea of objective valuation can be seen as the left's response to controlling business (with liberties reserved for social exchanges.) The idea that an economy can be controlled--i.e. the other way to form a powerful central state--by dictating something as subjective as value appears to be the unintentional consequence of a system that does not allow for value to be decided by individual actors. The point of objective valuation, it would seem, is to oppress the individuals who disagree with the chosen issuers of value.

In other words, it would seem the ideal government and economy never attempts to dictate what is moral and what is valuable in an objective fashion (technically impossible but in other words, limiting their subjective nature to a chosen group); once these two concepts are removed from individual control and left to any form of collective to manage, it seems people drop like flies, either through killing others via war or killing themselves via famine. I'd sooner want a meal to cost less than pennies than for a meal to be free of charge; at least I'd know how much that meal is actually worth.