Enchantment or advancement.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

So, its economics + labourers' attention + technical knowledge if we are using objective measures of worth. If we argue that worth lies in the eye of the beholder, though, just as meaning lies in the reader's mind, ( ) then that's a subjective measure where some prefer enchantment or others advancement.

Objective measures of worth / value?

How would you count for it? I mean Karl Marx spent the first sections of his Capital to analyse the different meanings and scopes of "value" coming up with more fuzz than a definitive answer...

There is the "use-value" of a thing (how well a product does the thing it's made for - or more modernly: how well it answers the needs of the buyer) and the "market-value" of a thing (how much people are ready to pay for it because they think it worth it), but also the "surplus-value" (how much is it acceptable to charge "from between" by the owner of the production-system) and all that stuff...

How would you determine the objective worth or value of a thing produced in a human society? A cheap thing can be good, inattentive labour may bring forwards decent results and much attention may end up in poor quality - and sometimes someone makes it well without knowledge and a cognisant person may make bad stuff if he has a bad day or something...

And can we approach a thing like quality from purely objective measures in the first place?

But I'm not sure it's up to a "subjective measure" either, but more like to a culturally relative measure which changes by times and cultures - and fashions - which people live themselves into and believe it's them who decide about the value of things...