Editing Value

The word '''value''' has several meanings:

*emotionally, it means the things that we act to protect, e.g. we '''value''' our own children, our own home.

*[[moral value]] is the closest to this that we can express in symbols like words, and it has some legal expressions, e.g. [[moral rights]] to creative works, but is generally considered intangible.

:When people talk about "the spirit of" an agreement or institution they are trying to invoke its moral value.   Whether this invocation is itself moral or not depends on the situation and the values of the invoker - a [[faction]] consists of people who will generally accept one view of this, and unite to defend that view against others.  This type of valuation is usually quite irrational because it isn't meant to be challenged, it's more of a challenge in and of itself to say "that is amoral" or "that is immoral" for instance.
*[[local value]] is the value of things for their physically closeness to us and their ability to protect what we value emotionally, e.g. [[local food]] sources are more trustworthy to us because we know that we are not exposing our children to more harm than they would normally encounter in their environment (note that this applies in both very pure and very polluted environments).  It is also important to preserve [[local economy]] and [[rare local food]] stuffs, e.g. [[w:Slow Food]] movement
*[[ecological value]] is a vague concept probably referring to [[ecological yield]] or [[natural capital]] or [[environmental standards]]
*[[social value]] is a vague concept probably referring to [[social capital]] or [[labour standards]] or [[human rights]]
*'''price value''' or '''exchange value''' is the most commonly used sense of the word, and the one most often abused in [[advertising]], e.g. a [[fast food]] '''value meal''' which is usually doing great damage to moral and local values.  A better term is [[price premium]] which acknowledges that there is a price at which people will over-rule moral or local values.
*'''use-value''' is a term from anarchist economics implying that there is no exchange value, and that one must look at any product or service only in terms of what processes it enables - an early [[service economy]] analysis which led in part to [[industrial ecology]] and [[Natural Capitalism]] theories recently.