[jjoonathan]

In a capitalist system, a zero sum game in which titans buy ads to pull marketshare back and forth between each other creates value, yet feeding a starving person does not.

That's a ridiculous statement, of course, but it demonstrates that the economic notion of value can diverge wildly from most other reasonable notions of value. The seemingly inoffensive "economic value = value" approximation is actually a trojan horse used by libertarians to sneak the more objectionable aspects of their theories past casual observers and put a tautological halo over markets and their preferences.

It's a point worth keeping in mind when considering complaints that X system doesn't optimize economic value.