[aeturnum]

I think most people would argue that items with uses other than exchange medium generally have some intrinsic value. A dollar has no intrinsic value, but a dollar bill can be used as kindling. Even if no one values it, you can drink water, etc.

[praxeologist]

Dollar bills have some [quite limited IMO] utility like the paper being burned as kindling or, "Oh, aren't these neat scraps of paper".

Utility != intrinsic value. Nothing has intrinsic value.

[adriand]

> Nothing has intrinsic value.

I think what you are actually saying is that "intrinsic value" is actually meaningless.

If "intrinsic value" is actually a meaningful statement about something (even if you believe that nothing has that quality), then I think we can indeed find things that have it, which disproves your statement in the first place.

The first definition of "value" that I found is "the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something." Note that this is by definition subjective - i.e. "value" is a perceived quality. More specifically, it is a quality perceived by humans.

Therefore I propose a definition of "intrinsic value": something that all entities to whom "value" has meaning universally believe has that quality. For example, oxygen.

One could argue that there are entities to whom "value" is meaningful but that do not value either of those things, such as aliens who do not need either substance. However, since we are not aware of any such entities, it doesn't prove this wrong.

On the other hand, I suppose a person who is deliberately trying to asphyxiate themselves may not value oxygen after all. Perhaps this disproves my own point...

Either way, it's an interesting debate.

[praxeologist]

>I think what you are actually saying is that "intrinsic value" is actually meaningless.

No, I mean exactly what I said. Nothing has intrinsic value, ever.

>Therefore I propose a definition of "intrinsic value": something that all entities to whom "value" has meaning universally believe has that quality. For example, oxygen.

If I already have many lifetimes' worth of oxygen for my breathing apparatus, I might have no interest in and place no value upon your stock of oxygen.

Maybe the beings in question are some sort of alien life form that live in volcanos and breathe nitrous oxide. The type of error you are making is similar to calling air "superabundant" and then conflating that with "unlimited".

[adriand]

> If I already have many lifetimes' worth of oxygen for my breathing apparatus, I might have no interest in and place no value upon your stock of oxygen.

And yet, clearly you value oxygen enough to stock up many lifetime's worth of it - a testament to its intrinsic value.

> Maybe the beings in question are some sort of alien life form that live in volcanos and breathe nitrous oxide.

You have no evidence that such beings exist, however - so this is purely hypothetical.

On giving this more thought, however, perhaps objects or substances are too simple to consider from the perspective of intrinsic value. So how about something completely different, such as wisdom? Does wisdom have intrinsic value?

Those who do not value it are not wise, and are therefore not qualified to judge whether or not it has intrinsic value...

[praxeologist]

I stocked up on oxygen in the first place because I had an end—sustaining my own life—and the means for this was, in part, supplying myself with oxygen. Oxygen only ever was considered valuable because of my purposeful human action. It was never valuable "just because" as the concept of "intrinsic value" implies.

You seem to be partially accepting my argument that "intrinsic value" doesn't exist but trying to win by redefining "things having intrinsic value" as "things necessary to sustain human life". Okay, things that humans need to survive are "intrinsically valuable" to that end but that isn't what we're talking about.

[illegalsmile]

I was just listening to let's talk bitcoin and it was mentioned that gold has intrinsic value whereas bitcoin doesn't and how people viewed it. Ultimately nothing was resolved and to the outsider listening in it seems that a conversation about intrinsic value is a conversation about semantics at best and philosophical rhetoric at worst. Ultimately, the whole idea of intrinsic value is a waste of time and adds nothing to the conversation for bitcoin or gold.

Maybe the only things that have intrinsic values are the atoms that make up our world and us as without them we have nothing and don't exist. So I guess on that point gold... fuck.

[praxeologist]

Nothing has intrinsic value. I think what the presenters you are talking about are trying to say is that gold has some utility while bitcoin has none. Bitcoin has utility in that it is an incorruptible ledger of transactions, that transactions can take place outside of the legal purview of various states, etc.

Bitcoin has no utility absent the present state of affairs where people believe in statism and government agents actively forbid money besides their fiat regime's. Some Austrian economists fail to see why bitcoin really is money, but it is because it has utility in this manner I mentioned.

[dasil003]

So intrinsic value is a myth. Now we are getting philosophical.

[praxeologist]

>Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act. --Ludwig von Mises

A 'price' is a historical datum of an exchange. I valued my thing at X of your things, probably in terms of monetary units; you likewise valued my things in some sort of agreeable way that we voluntarily made an exchange.

"Intrinsic value" implies, "People will like this shit no matter what." Real value is subjective and only created by acting human beings.