[unclebucknasty]

It's interesting because it highlights that if a thing has so many properties describing what it is, then at a certain point it's not a thing at all, but a collection of characteristics that could be tweaked to describe anything.

At that point, the idea of behaviors is rendered void, as the universe of possible behaviors is just too large.

So, I think that's the guiding principle in your suggestion to consider what value a given design provides to the system: that is, start by modelling the behaviors your system requires, then create an object hiearchy that reflects those behaviors most concisely.

This is probably our intent, but we may be derailed by too little respect for YAGNI.