These ideas are very, very old - Adam Smith and John Locke were writing about the difference between an item's "use value" (how useful it is) and its "exchange value" (what you can trade for it) in the 1700's, and Karl Marx spent a lot of time on this in his book Capital, first published in 1867.<p>I guess it's worth restating this stuff (because obviously everyone <i>didn't</i> get the memo) but it's misleading to present these insights as if they were new. It may be that the ideas have never occurred to some people before - but while it's nice to think up smart things all by yourself, it's even nicer to begin with an education about what's already been figured out, so one can work on new problems instead of centuries' old problems.