> My only "point" (if there was one) was that "the market sets the price", 
> so if honey can be sold to multiple people at $40/lb, this implies that 
> the honey was/is "worth it ...as values don't really even "exist" until 
> money changes hands...

...As in the old saying, "The more you pay, the more it's worth".  Value, 
like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That is a big part of the picture, alright, but to a greater or lesser 
extent, a lot of people don't go along with that idea, and believe that 
there is a right, or "honest" value for things.  Many believe that "value" 
relates to more than money, and that markets cannot be allowed to be totally 
unrestrained by ethical considerations or other outside factors.

I can see both sides of this, and don't think that this question is 
something that is simple to discuss or reconcile, but that we all have an 
intuitive understanding.  Any one way of arriving at valuation falls short 
of giving the whole picture, except, perhaps at one brief point in time. 
Markets are notoriously irrational at times; emotion, deceit and ignorance 
distort prices temporarily (as is possible in this case).  Sometimes 
over-arching considerations enter the picture, as, for example, when CNOOC 
decided to buy Unocal.

Seems to me that totally unrestrained markets can lead to well-documented 
abuses (robber barons), just as the end point of the "honest value" approach 
leads to price controls, scarcity and abuses, too.  Consider Venezuala 
lately.  Most of us prefer a mix.

> I just happen to know of that co-op, and their creaky old 
> gas-chromatograph is just as big a joke when it comes to "chemical 
> analysis".  Golly. No financial acumen to protect their members, technical 
> assets 30 years out-of-date, ya kinda wonder what they did with all the 
> money they skimmed off the sales of your honey, dontcha?

It's not as if the management are taking it home.  Successive managements 
and boards have just proven to be unsophisticated and misguided, but 
somehow, in spite of that, been lucky enough to manage to keep on keeping. 
Plus, the members are willing to put up with a lot and subsidize the 
repeated losses through reduced returns, with hardly a whimper.  Moreover, 
more than a few beekeepers have been ripped off by artbitrary and capricious 
policy changes, and/or actions directly contrary to the direction from the 
membership, and just silently gone away.  I am one.  It is the Canadian way. 

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