[MCneill27]

This is a horrible misreading of Kantian TI. The idea of "value" is what's worthless in itself, not objects or entities. Yes, everything is worthless in itself, but that says more about "worth" than it does about "everything", and it isn't mutually exclusive with there being things in the world that are required for human life. Value at the bottom end takes its shape from these things, and in the top end, like complex financial derivatives, is far removed from human necessities.

You're missing that we can get really close to things-in-themselves. It's like you got an erection as soon as you read that we were fundamentally separate from things-in-themselves, and just ran with it.

[nathias]

It can't be a 'horrible misreading of Kantian TI' because it isn't a reading of Kantian TI, in itself as distinguished from for itself and for others is a standard concept in philosophy since Kant and part of common sense language.

My point is just that value isn't some simple natural thing that you could consider as a positive fact, like you are trying to do. Value doesn't 'take its 'shape' (whatever that would mean) from necessities of human life', and has no immediate special relation to necessities.