Economic Value begs the question "value for whom?" Value for the people with money. Capitalism isn't about doing what people want, it's about doing what rich people want. And what do rich people want? A few extra goods and services, yes, but mostly: to get paid for being rich.
The purpose of capitalism is to ensure rich people get paid for being rich.
Is it any wonder this creates a crisis of purpose for people who aren't rich?
> Economic Value begs the question "value for whom?" Value for the people with money.
Yes - e.g. Android phones comprise 80% of the market because people with money buy them... with that money. You can build a supercar for rich people, or fidget spinners for millions of kids. Either can reward you, as long as you do it well.
> The purpose of capitalism is to ensure rich people get paid for being rich.
The purpose of capitalism is to allocate resources efficiently, noting that the people doing the work and/or taking the risks can do this much better than a monarch or a bureaucrat.
> Either [serving the king or the peasant] can reward you, as long as you do it well.
Correct! But this is a function of the wealth distribution. If it's not too lopsided, chasing volume is a good strategy. In some markets, it still is, and that's great! However, the more lopsided the wealth distribution gets, the more it looks like a palace economy where a rational actor should ignore the masses and spend every waking breath figuring out how to get in the good graces of the nobility.
> The purpose of capitalism is to allocate resources efficiently
Efficiently according to whom? For what purpose? We circle right back to the definition of economic value and how it's wealth-weighted: if everyone has roughly equal wealth, they get weighted roughly equally in the efficiency calculation and the economic definition of efficiency roughly matches the colloquial definition. However, if Mt. Olympus has all the weight, "efficient" means "efficient at extracting tribute from the plebs."
The wealth distribution is getting more and more lopsided every day. This has consequences.
Wealth distribution is a red herring. I would rather live in a society where I am richer even though someone else is billions of times richer, than one where I am poorer and everyone else is as poor as me.
Economic value transcends "money", "capitalism", "the rich", "corporations" and abstractions like those.
It's a far more fundamental phenomenon.
Simply put, real economic value arises when two entities voluntarily provide mutual benefit to one another, thus improving the overall situation for both.
The voluntary nature of this interaction is critical; when it's missing, there can't be mutual benefit. That's what happens with taxation, for example. The involuntary nature of such an interaction means that the entity who is forced to unwillingly pay the tax is always worse off than if the transaction hadn't happened.
That's why government "jobs" are so inherently pointless and harmful to society at large. They way they're "funded" makes society worse off, and then what the government "workers" do with such resources typically makes society even more worse off than that.
> real economic value arises when two entities voluntarily provide mutual benefit to one another
I think that at least 80% of the economic exchanges I engage in don't qualify as a "voluntary exchange". I engage in them because I have no other choice. The government doesn't enter into this aspect.
The objective function of capitalism is wealth-weighted. The term "economic value" tries to hide this fact.
If everyone had equal wealth and equal weight in the objective function, your picture of reality (voluntary transactions etc etc) would be correct! If Mt. Olympus had all the wealth and completely controlled the objective function, my picture of reality would be correct.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to look at the actual wealth distribution function and interpolate world views accordingly.
The purpose of capitalism is to ensure rich people get paid for being rich.
Is it any wonder this creates a crisis of purpose for people who aren't rich?