There's so much to unpack on your first paragraph. You would expect the cost to remain constant even though you then understand its unlikely. I would expect I should be able to fly if I jump off my roof, but that's unlikely. Its almost like the values change because of some amount of subjectivity to them...hmm..nah can't be, it's the laws of thermodynamics that set prices and determine values!

> I would want today's bread

So right there we see a difference in the value of what was produced a week ago to what was produced today. If the value of his labor was constant, why wouldn't you value his work put into that loaf the same? Shouldn't the two loaves be similar? Ah, maybe because the world continued on so the fact he made bread a week ago doesn't matter as much anymore, as if it's not as useful or valuable anymore. Hmm...

> I don't think this is really the same as your first mowing comment

It is precisely the same. Sure, the day it was mowed it was worth the same to me as a freshly mowed lawn today. But the usefulness of my mowing became less over time because the lawn and the trees continue to grow. I need to keep doing it.

The baker can't just bake all the bread a week ago and expect people still value it the same. The world marches on, the bread goes stale and moldy, the yard keeps growing.

But someone labors and makes a more durable good, and that labor (usually) holds its value a good bit longer. Not forever though, as that washing machine or car will also rust away and become less useful over time.

In the end though, everything we do will eventually be worth nothing. Everything you make will fall apart, everything you write will be forgotten.

> price is the consensus of "what people are willing to pay" vs "the difficulty in providing the item"

It's almost like you're describing usefulness here. How useful is it to the people buying it versus how laborious it was to make it. Funny how that usefulness metric still shows up here.

> Value, I believe, is a product of thermodynamics. Things are useful, because they allow you to be more efficient, and use less energy.

This does nothing to explain why that barrel of crude is worth negative dollars to me while its worth positive dollars to others. If it is some product of the laws of thermodynamics that make a barrel of crude worth $76, why do the laws of thermodynamics behave differently around me than some commodities trader? Or maybe this whole "iTs thErMoDynAmicS" is just fluff around "things have value because they're useful"?

It also fails to explain why you value that loaf of bread today more than the loaf of bread from a week ago. The energy cost for that loaf was the same. If it all boils down to energy, should the bread be the same price? Don't they have the same value? Why are you being so subjective about your valuation of the two loaves of bread?

I mean, your last sentence essentially points out that "product of thermodynamics" ends up being just a measure of usefulness...so...one could just say value is a subjective measure of usefulness?

And even then you argue things have value because they make me more efficient. So how does this explain the "value" of a rare baseball card or a fancy work of art? Does taking a vacation really make me more efficient? Maybe I just really like the color red, so I spend more on a red car that looks cool, it was more valuable to me, but did that make me more efficient? I like cinnamon raisin bread and sometimes pay a premium for it, did that somehow make me more efficient? No, but it's useful to me because I subjectively derive happiness from these things.

Some people hate raisin bread, and to them that loaf is worth less than a regular loaf of wheat or whatever. Or if I'm making a ham sandwich, I don't think I'd normally want to use raisin bread for that, so I wouldn't generally put a higher value on regular bread over raisin bread in that case. It's not anything about efficiency, it's about subjective measures of usefulness.