[ben_w]

Value != price

Food remains valuable even though production is increasingly automated; there's not much difference in value of hand-picked {insert name of soft fruit whose harvesting has yet to be automated here} over a machine that sticks a net around the base of a tree and shakes it until the fruit falls off, but there sure is a difference in price.

For e.g. software: when I'm buying, I don't care in the slightest if it was made by one single human, a team of humans of my nationality, contracted and outsourced to the lowest bidder in a developing nation, a sentient typewriter, or an evolutionary algorithm — I care that it solves the problem that I had and for which I entered the market looking to buy.

[zkmon]

Maybe I don't understand your equation. For me, value and price are not too different. Value of your car is the price that you can put on it today. Price of goods must come down to the cost of making it plus margins. If making costs are low, price goes low. As simple as that for me.

[ben_w]

Price is what it costs, value is brings you.

If the only thing you can imagine doing with a thing is selling it, as in you cannot imagine using it, price and value become the same.

> Price of goods must come down to the cost of making it plus margins

The difference is "profit" or "loss" depending which is higher.

Buyers will (in general) only buy when they value a thing more than the price charged.