What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” wrote Oscar Wilde. In The Price of Everything, The Value of Nothing, a HowTheLightGetsIn London debate programmed in partnership with Deloitte, panellists Daniel Susskind, Richard Kibble, Abby Innes, and Will Hutton explore the question of value. Does the economy, as it operates today, genuinely reflect what people and societies value, or does it prioritise profit over value, perpetuating the problem Oscar Wilde identified? Once central to economic theory, value has now been largely side-lined, even as the climate crisis and global uncertainties demand urgent rethinking. The debate underscores why understanding what we value—and how to value it—remains one of the most critical challenges of our time.

What do we really mean by the word ‘value’? In economics, value is often equated with price. This means the worth of something is determined by the price we’re willing to pay for it in the market, rather than the cost of producing it. This way of thinking has dominated economic theory since the ‘marginalist revolution,’ a shift that emphasised analysing the most recent or marginal cases to determine market behaviour. Prior to this, the dominant theory of value was a labour theory of value. This theory held that the price of a good was determined by the total labour required to produce it. Since all goods involve some level of human effort in their creation, their final value could be calculated by summing up the labour involved. This calculation then served as the foundation for setting the good’s market price.