How much does it cost for parents to bring a sandwich to the child at the end of school? If we add the bread and the ham, are we approaching the price? The error of saying that the sum of product prices reflects the value of this action, as there are incalculable values in this surveillance activity.

The concept of value can include very diverse knowledge: individuals have values and have nothing to do with what we have in the current account; things and services have a value or value that we sometimes try to determine through price; or when we talk about the stock market we talk about financial assets, intangible elements that sometimes have no value. In the attempt to express the value of something, the valuation operation is usually performed, and in the inverse sense, the valuation has sought on several occasions to assign value to something (whether it has value or not). What looks like a mouth knot has its essence.

When I was little, I was curious about the quarry we had near the house. The trucks left the shore loaded with sand and stones. Over the years, the hill was eroding, of course. Then I realized that the wear did not form spontaneously, as the surface wound forms. As different economists explain, natural stock becomes an economic flow that is valued as a positive economic activity in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But what is the real value of this activity? We can find countless examples in the extractivist and/or energy economy, which have been identified as negative externalities, which must necessarily be accepted by society. How to assess the natural damage caused by mineral extraction? How can we visualise nuclear waste that will be unsolvable for hundreds of years? Does it reflect the prices of this type of energy?

To mitigate these negative externalities, we can find different theories about the role of the public sector: from those that require more intervention to those that believe that it should have a minimal presence. The economist Mazzucato notes in his book The Value of Things Government Activity Is Sometimes Associated With Unproductive. Imbalances in the private sector have in many cases been addressed: through the tax system, ensuring the performance of certain sectors, as well as ensuring public services and infrastructure. These actions are often reflected in GDP, a measure of the welfare of countries, but generally as expenditure. For example, if more teaching and/or health personnel were hired, this indicator would increase because more wages would be paid. But to say that the values that this economic flow can generate go beyond wages is not barbaric. How much is it worth betting on a healthier society? How much longer does it cost to care for health workers? How do we measure the impact of a smaller group of students in classrooms? These values are often left out of statistics. And surely valuing them all would be like an exercise of putting a liter of water in a bottle of half a liter, that is, impossible.

The difficulty of valuing the unproductive makes the imperfect economy, known as science, move away from the equation. But what we don't consider is priceless doesn't mean it doesn't have value. The feminist economy knows that well, the child who received the sandwich knows it with a hug.