Sometimes for ideological reasons, people, including commentators and economists,
tend to have anchoring and framing biases that make them confuse various notions,
which might be linked somewhat, but are far from being identical.

The fact that every school of thoughts added its own, usually narrow, approach,
makesit difficult to unravel the ball of strings

When it is no longer clear what we are talking about, when definitions are
mixed up, no wonder that reasoning is perturbed and that there is a lot of
conflicts between various schools of thoughts.

The example of value

Confusions are frequent about what is value.

Value is essentially an estimate of the potential or desirable price.

That estimate is done:

Either in a subjective way, by any person according to its expectations
   or even its wishes,

Or in a theoretical way ("fair" price, "intrinsic" value) by analysts using
   specific standards

That makes already several different notions. But also, value is often confused
with:

Objective value. Price (market value or, in some cases, administrative                decision). As it is usually publicly known (except when a black market exists) it is the most objective data the reality that can be seen. It depends on how well the market works or the administration decides. It can also be influenced by irrational behaviors. But it keeps being the reality. Subjective value. Utility or ophelimity (economic satisfaction), It is a personal value that somebody estimates or feels according to its own perceptions, needs, preferences and possibilities). Usage value, a kind of utility extended to the whole population, based    on theoretical assumptions. Social utility, a close concept that extends the utility notion to the    "common good". This raises the question of who could judge what it is. Or an element of cost (work value).

Some history about economic value

Many economists gave their own approaches of economic value, some of them
with quite a narrow view.

Daniel Bernoulli was the first to link value to utility and more specifically
    to risk attitude.

This idea is still used, for example to define a financial value, or more
precisely an expected financial utility.

The Physiocrats considered that only agriculture produced economic
    value, and that industry and trade did not add any.

This misconception still exists in another form, as some consider that
only products-generating industries (agriculture and manufacturing),
and not the service activities, bring economic value.

This is ignoring that in developed countries 70% or 80% of the economic
activity, thus of production (as measured by the GDP - Gross Domestic
Product of those territories) is made of services.

Adam Smith, Pareto and Marx related economic value only to the
   quantity of work needed.

This was ignoring the utility factor

Economic value and factors of production

Far from stating, as the above quoted economists thought, that the value of
goods and services originates only from the soil (and natural resources), or
the quantity of work (in extreme cases work can even be destructive if what
it produces has less value than what is used to produce it),  it supposes a
convergence of all factors of production that help to satisfy needs or
desires (economic utility).

In our modern economy, those factors are,

of course work and natural resources the invested capital, knowledge and abilities (a form of capital), initiatives, innovations and risk taking the structures of production (legal, organizational)

See more details on those factors in the "Virtual aspects..." section below

Economic growth is often considered as a quantitative accumulation.

But this is only a part of the story, maybe not the most important one nowadays.

Actually, the economy is a "dynamical system" subject to "percolations" that
take place above "critical thresholds".

They create changes of rhythm (acceleration / deceleration) but, and this is
      something more crucial, "qualitative jumps"

that bring "emerging properties".

Economic growth in the 21st century

For example, nowadays, at least in developed countries, the share of "material goods" in the economy is less and less important, as the lion's share of production is made more and more of services. This is true of all industries: some are ascending, some are declining. All knowledge-related activities are the new stars. Even in emerging countries. Welcome to the "postindustrial" economy! Also globalization, by multiplying trade opportunities, allows growth to extend to more and more countries (the "emerging countries" phenomenon). The danger is that many protectionists propose to break that virtuous trend. General protectionism, under the pretence to fight the economic crisis, is what made it much longer and deeper in the 1930-1940 decade. The environment issues (pollution, raw material and fossil fuel exhaustion...) will not be solved by "degrowth" as some ideologues try to impose it (*) but by favoring the mutation and growth or future-oriented sectors of activities. By the way, the evolution of market prices (they rise for natural resources, they decrease for high tech goods and services) helps to reach that goal. The black point is that some emerging countries have to develop physical resource-intensive and energy-intensive industries (and agriculture), to satisfy the basic needs of their population and avoid unemployment. But it can be done wisely, so as to limit their own environmental problems. (*) Well, they have the right to do it for themselves, and also to give tips to spare resources. But some movements see here the opportunity to propose a new collectivism.

Nowadays we live more and more in a world of ideas.

We often hear that "virtual reality" is intruding more and more in society in general as
well as in everybody's life.

A phenomenon that is not limited to "advanced" countries.

That "virtualization" impacts more and more the economy, a domain of social activity
among others. Here, the phenomenon is not limited to the reductive new economy
concept, focused on communication technologies. It is not limited either to the more
extensive concept of behavioral economics.

It has consequences on about  all aspects of the economy, such as:

Products and services - except those which satisfy basic material needs - have
   an important mental content.

This involves cognition and emotions, for those who purchase them, who
receive them or who create and supply them,

Prices result for a big part from an equilibrium reached between subjective
   values.

Besides, money is nowadays and has been for a long time, since gold and
   silver coins are no more in use, an abstract and immaterial being.

What is money? (see the link) Three roles and two forms Money is an economic instrument made to 1) exchange (to pay, to give...), 2) to measure and 3) to keep value. It has two forms: The main one, "sight" bank account balances, (used with transfers,     checks, payment cards...). It is also called "bank money" and is well     adapted to be used as "electronic cash". And physical cash (banknotes/coins) which role is more and more     secondary.     It is also called "fiat money". It can be legally defined as a commitment based on other commitments Money is created by the banking system, essentially as a counterpart of a myriad of borrowers' commitments. The banking system commits itself to make that money acceptable and usable (as payment notably...). Those contractual commitments can be considered as the collateral of depositors (and ndirectly banknote bearers). Central banks, which control that creation (and which also issue directly the "fiat money"), and are lenders of last resort add another level of warranty. States and their taxpayers are the ultimate guarantors in case the banking system cannot face its own commitment to money holders. Monetary policy Each central bank is responsible to control how a specific money unit (Euro, US dollar, Mexican peso, or whatever) is issued by the banking system of the related territory. It regulates the quantity and price (interbank interest rate, to simplify, and, for some central banks, the foreign exchange rate) of that money. It is usually considered, here again to simplify, that too much credit and money might  bring consumer price inflation and /or asset bubbles, and that not enough money might  bring deflation / recession and/or underinvestment / asset crashes.  More details in my "what is money" article

Work includes more and more knowledge, organization, communication,
    preferences, conception, heuristics, money flows, etc.

Capital (see above) is not only, unlike classical economists thought,

Capital is an economic "riches" (like products and services) and a specific
resource.

Its value, which measures to what extent it is present among other riches, is not
directly based on the price of the physical equipment used for production.

It depends largely on less tangible elements such as the company's goodwill,
the anticipation of gains and the equity investor preferences....

The capital-work duet does not cover the whole range of factors of

production (which include also inventiveness, subjectivity, knowledge...).

Between you and me, how strange that many economists still did not fully understood what the present world is, which creates biases in their reasoning. Artists, and some scientists (neurosciences...) understood this before them. Cleric and gurus also (here it is a bit more worrying). Same thing for philosophers,psychologists and sociologists (although often with ideological prejudices and quarrels between schools). Let us not forget that emotions, immediate satisfactions and dissatisfactions, are often what triggers decisions, sorry for the economic man who sees only rational calculations. Economists from all schools might be too materialistic, they might need to play virtual economy games on the internet, of course with the utmost moderation, better not shift fully into other dimensions and end up as immaterial ectoplasms in parallel universes ;-).

Or at least, as a start, a world monetary standard (WOMOST)

and a World monetary institution (WOM0I)

=> see my article: Towards a world currency

WOMOST World Monetary Standard	WOMOI World Monetary Institution
* Reference and pivot for all   Forex quotations. Compatible    with floating exchange rates. * Self standing value, independent    standard based neither on precious    metals nor currency basket. * Also quotation tool for bonds,    contracts, commodities	* Democratic federal    cooperative statute * Mission 1: Supervisor of the world    financial and banking system, including    "sovereign" aspects.    Legal power to put in check any    monetary and  financial excess. * Mission 2 : Central bank of    central banks (reserve pool and    liquidity supply bank)