> How valuable is Wikipedia to you? [...] You might try to calculate its value by summing the labor [...] but this would make it more valuable if people made it less efficient
No, it would make it more valuable if people made it less efficient and the same amount of content got added. In fact, if you couldn't edit Wikipedia without filling out hard-to-obtain forms in triplicate, scarcely anyone would bother. I'm not sure I'd actually want to endorse the LToV, but for something like Wikipedia it's at least a useful heuristic.
> You can't hope to solve these problems without understanding what value is.
This comment, plus the Economics 101 material that preceded it, suggests that you think I don't understand what value is. If you have evidence for that, I would be interested to see it. (Note: asking a rhetorical question is not the same as admitting ignorance about the subject of that question.)
> To defend people in marketing
I wasn't attacking them. Some advertising (and other marketing) has considerable value to the world at large as well as to the people who are paying for it. Some, not so much.
> Right.
In which case, we are agreed on the original point here: there is no incoherence or foolishness about saying "They get paid well, but they're also doing work of dubious value": the work can have clear (and large) value to the people writing the paychecks, but be of dubious (or indeed clearly negative) value to the world at large.
> How valuable is Wikipedia to you? [...] You might try to calculate its value by summing the labor [...] but this would make it more valuable if people made it less efficient
No, it would make it more valuable if people made it less efficient and the same amount of content got added. In fact, if you couldn't edit Wikipedia without filling out hard-to-obtain forms in triplicate, scarcely anyone would bother. I'm not sure I'd actually want to endorse the LToV, but for something like Wikipedia it's at least a useful heuristic.
> You can't hope to solve these problems without understanding what value is.
This comment, plus the Economics 101 material that preceded it, suggests that you think I don't understand what value is. If you have evidence for that, I would be interested to see it. (Note: asking a rhetorical question is not the same as admitting ignorance about the subject of that question.)
> To defend people in marketing
I wasn't attacking them. Some advertising (and other marketing) has considerable value to the world at large as well as to the people who are paying for it. Some, not so much.
> Right.
In which case, we are agreed on the original point here: there is no incoherence or foolishness about saying "They get paid well, but they're also doing work of dubious value": the work can have clear (and large) value to the people writing the paychecks, but be of dubious (or indeed clearly negative) value to the world at large.