“We equate the market prices of goods, activities, and labour with their worth and that worth with what society values.”
In today’s economy, many of us are told that we’re valued for what we contribute. But what if our economic system is blind to entire forms of contribution like care, presence, or healing?
As a leader working with companies contributing to people & planetary wellbeing, I’ve been reflecting on how our models of “value” shape the world we’re building, especially in the face of AI, climate collapse, and a post-COVID society still grappling with deep inequality.
Our Economy Doesn’t Rely on the “Labour Theory of Value” Anymore. But It’s Still Exclusionary.
Classical economists like David Ricardo argued that value came from human labour. But modern economics has largely moved on. Instead, we use marginal productivity theory, the foundation of most microeconomics and public policy today.
This theory says that workers and capital are paid based on what they add to production. In other words, your wage reflects your economic productivity.
What happens to people the market sees as “unproductive”?
- Disabled individuals who are excluded from traditional workplaces.
- Caregivers doing unpaid, invisible work.
- The unhoused, underemployed, chronically ill, or elderly.
If your contribution isn’t captured by the market, you become economically invisible and systematically undervalued.
> We’ve updated the theory. But we haven’t updated our thinking.
> We’ve replaced labour theory with productivity theory and still left millions behind.
AI Is Now Doing the Labour. So Where Does That Leave People?
AI doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t unionise. It doesn’t take sick days or need childcare. It’s replacing tasks once performed by humans across industries… writing, analysing, designing, and maybe in the near future, caring.
As firms seek efficiency and scalability, labour is being displaced but our systems of value still revolve around productivity. That leaves us with a society where value is increasingly abstracted from people altogether.
If prices reflect what “society values”, and we’re pricing human beings out of relevance, what kind of society are we creating?
Valuing Life Over Output: An Emerging Path (And It’s Challenges).
We don’t need to accept this status quo. As purpose-led leaders, we can choose to build systems that recognise value in broader, more human terms.
Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Approach offers one path forward measuring well-being based not on income, but on people’s real freedoms to live lives they have reason to value. Their work isn’t without critique: not everyone has the same ability to exercise agency, and the focus on choice can shift responsibility from collective care to the individual. The capability approach may also overlook structural power, and overlook ecosystems and planetary health entirely.
Feminist economics reminds us that caregiving, community work, and emotional labour are economic activities even if they’re unpaid. This is important to remember but at times doesn’t go deeply enough into how race, colonization, disability, sexuality and migration intersect with gender to create further inequity. The work of Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality helped us to better understand the interplay of these elements and how they can create layers of marginalization.
Post-growth movements ask us to reimagine economies that serve life and community rather than just focusing on output and efficiency. However, applying degrowth principles globally could be unjust or even neo-colonial. Critics of degrowth argue this movement emerges most notably from wealthy countries where overconsumption is a serious issue, versus smaller countries where growth for housing, healthcare, infrastructure and income, are still needed. Post-growth also doesn’t always provide a compelling cultural vision for what a good life looks like after growth and humans desire for improvement, security and meaning… not just subsistence.
And behavioural and social economists are showing how fairness, dignity, and trust are essential to long-term well-being. Sometimes however the focus of modern behavioural and social economists centre the individual rather than the failures of institutions, systems or power structures. We may be encouraged to recycle, eat less meat, or “self-regulate” our carbon footprints while avoiding hard regulation of fossil fuel companies. Behavioural economics may also point out that people are “bad at making decisions” while overlooking that people may be navigating complex, uncertain, and unequal systems. At its worst, behavioural science is used in marketing, tech design, and financial services to manipulate us, versus using the science to empower us.
A Call to Leaders
If you’re building, funding, or shaping the future, ask yourself:
- Are we valuing people, or only their productivity?
- Are our policies and practices inclusive of those who are economically invisible?
- Are we designing systems where everyone can thrive regardless of how the market “sees” them?
At Tandem, we work with organizations who want to lead with purpose, not just profit. And that starts with challenging the assumptions baked into our economic logic.
Because the economy should serve people. Not the other way around.
What do you think we should value in the age of AI and inequality?
Lean into your growth edge
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