In our present economy, value has quietly but radically shifted. It has unpegged — untethered — from the anchors that once gave it meaning: labor and utility. In pre-modern times, the price of something reflected the effort to produce it and the use it served. Even under feudal logic, when survival shaped the rhythm of work, there was a correspondence between what was made, what was needed, and what could sustain a community. Labor and utility were intertwined; value was tangible, grounded, and legible.
Today, the relationship is fracturing. Goodwill, the intangible accounting measure that represents trust, reputation, and relational depth, dominates the perception of corporate worth. In many cases, it surpasses the value of tangible assets by magnitudes. A company can be worth billions because of the belief in its potential, even if it produces nothing of intrinsic utility proportional to that valuation. The system has created an economy of expectation over substance, where the multiplier of faith replaces the multiplier of utility.
[ø1]
— The Economy of Sentiment
This unpegging has consequences. When value detaches from labor and utility, markets become dominated by emotion: fear, speculation, and anticipation. Stock exchanges, cryptocurrency platforms, and digital asset markets respond not to grounded production but to the oscillation of collective sentiment. Fear drives sudden sell-offs, trust drives frenzied buying, and the cycle repeats. The more detached value becomes, the more centrifugal the system grows: resources, attention, and energy fragment under the pressure of expectation.
Production itself becomes paradoxical. We produce more than we need, not out of necessity but because the system incentivizes output as a signal rather than as contribution. Fashion designers, tech companies, and cultural producers release objects priced far beyond what most people could reasonably spend, creating an artificial scarcity that amplifies desire and inflates perceived value. At the same time, genuine abundance — the capacity to circulate, sustain, and regenerate resources — is overlooked. More production does not equal more abundance; it can intensify the centrifugal effect of fragmentation, feeding fear and reinforcing inequality.
