What is value? What is productive? A brief post on capitalism

From my perspective, one of the most critical questions we need to ask ourselves, in our hyper-technologist and financialized world, is ‘What is value?’. And not just ask it… but agree on a general structure/answer too.

This comes from the general zeitgeist of being pessimistic about our current (shareholder) capitalist model which has the assumption that value equals shareholder value (i.e. monetary capital gains, a.k.a. profit at all costs necessary).

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Indeed, capitalism and the corporate bylaws of legally obliging the board to pursue profit maximization have worked so efficiently that I would suggest we can use this same model to change the goalposts of what value is defined as in society.

Ultimately, creating value is a productive pursuit.

The German would likely proclaim, productivity is defined as an action that increases the efficiency and effectiveness of a process to increase output – or simply put, make more output with the same or fewer inputs. To a certain extent, I agree but only if we remove the human actor (and all sentient beings?) & user from this vast statement. If we claim that we need to make humans more efficient then we are simply seen as an inorganic process that can be optimized (let me know if you think this is so!).

And again I ask, what is value?

I propose that the equation of value includes generating an outcome of net (positive) authentic hope and reducing the illusion of suffering for the stakeholders of a process, product, and organization. An emphasis is added on this being part of the equation. Value should also include monetary capital gains as this is likely to increase hope for the future. From my perspective, there is a clear distinction and combinatorial effect of monetary value and of psychological/humane value in our system.

In fact, if we were to increase hope and reduce the illusion of suffering we would very likely also increase economic output and capital gains as measured by the classical metrics today.

This is a flowing thought as to how to measure/quantify hope and the illusion of suffering is beyond my understanding. Please chime in if you have ideas.

Spiritual or religious texts may answer this to the best of my knowledge. They claim that the illusion of suffering can be broken through self-knowledge (vs. any external material possession or experience).

The quantification of hope in individuals and groups remains a mystery to me. According to ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ by Paul Kalanithi Hope is defined as a combination of confidence and desire. And according to USV, a NYC-based VC partnership, value seems to be closely related to ‘Trust‘.

Ultimately, I will leave you with this: in capitalism, a rational actor would simply want their neighbors to be abundant with privately owned capital. However, in my worldview, I want my neighbors to be healthy, moral, full of hope, and confident (this includes having access to a sufficient amount of capital that is privately controlled/owned).

What type of neighbors do you wish to have?