Standard economics treats the price system as a neutral mechanism: prices aggregate dispersed information about supply and demand, and through this aggregation, coordinate the decisions of millions of actors without central direction. Living Value Theory does not deny this function but insists that it is not the whole story.
The price system is also a value inscription device: it fixes value in a particular form — numerical, commensurable, tradeable — and in doing so, transforms the nature of what is valued. Things that can be priced become different kinds of things from things that cannot. The extension of the price system into new domains — health, education, personal relationships — is not merely a change in allocation mechanism but a transformation of the value landscape.