Bitcoin Forum

Is it possible for value to be objective?  This is the one thing I can't seem to grasp about the RBE.  I'm inclined to believe that value is relative to the human condition and cannot be objectively defined without resorting to a personal interpretation, much like morality cannot be proven to be correct or false as it is entirely dependent on the individual (or an individual in some cases, i.e. God) to define what it is; as objectivity requires an observable truth, and nobody can agree what a pencil is worth without comparing it to something else which the person believes is valuable, how do we arrive at a value which is not dictated by the whims of human beings?

@Mike!

You should have asked that question before my 4th glass of wine!

I'm a technical trader (read that as charts) by training. Technical analysis believe that the price RIGHT NOW, not 3 seconds ago, not in 2 seconds, but right now represents the SUM TOTAL of all beliefs, hopes, dreams, fears of masses of people, summed up into a single number.

So perhaps the real value is only something asked on a temporal plane bounded by causality. Because in the next moment, everything will have changed as the sum of all those people shifts and causes the price to change in time. So then it cannot be known, as the only universal constant is change.

cj

Now for another glass of wine : )

I think it is not possible at all. Mostly because a single person can't express any objectivity at all. We're all traversed by a given language, a social condition, etc

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

Universe is just a matter. Atoms are sitting here and floating there. There is no meaning in anything. Physics and evolution are just about how things are, not how they should be. Only an acting human being (or alien, or animal) can look at all this stuff and say "this is good", "this is bad". And act based on that evaluation. If he likes warmth, he'd go to a warmer place or invent a fire. If he does not like cutting precious trees, he'd freeze and die. Either way, universe does not care, it just does what it does.

Consider voluntary transaction where we exchange Apple and Orange. I have Orange, but value Apple more. You have Apple, but value Orange more. Thus, we exchange. To make this exchange the values should be different.

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.

Agree.
The closest thing to objective value imo would be mass, or some kind of energy transformation ratio.

This reminds me of a thought I had, that there should be some kind of "objective political power" measurement. And that it should be based on how much actual energy a given person may control, regardless of how he chooses to use it and if he chooses to use it at all.