Not always, but in many cases we can. If you just let people vote with their dollars then you end up with a dystopian healthcare system, a 20% child poverty rate, comically expensive higher education, and so on.
Feeding a hungry child has "clear, undeniable social value". As does healthcare. Also infrastructure like roads and bridges has undeniable value. And testing whether drinking water and the food we eat is clean. So many things have clear value in society, but none of these cases are aligned with the profit motive, which is what the market uses.
When talking about software the work on the Linux kernel has clear, undeniable social value. Same for projects like Postgres and other indispensable tools. And this is mostly the work of volunteers, who during their day job work on software that does not meet this "clear, undeniable value" benchmark.
> When talking about software the work on the Linux kernel has clear, undeniable social value. Same for projects like Postgres and other indispensable tools. And this is mostly the work of volunteers, who during their day job work on software that does not meet this "clear, undeniable value" benchmark.
Note that in several projects, including at least linux and postgres, the percentage of purely volunteer work is constantly decreasing. See e.g. https://lwn.net/Articles/713803/
author thinks the result of doing so is biased, as he mentions,
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if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.
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That lead us to societies that are both decadent and destroying the planet. So I guess the answer is "no".