A homeless person forcefully providing the “service” of cleaning my window has negative value to me. So does Google ruining websearch and undermining web security and in tern national security too. Google hasn’t provided my life any value, while making the world a worse place. I was inclined to say YouTube provided me value in the past, until I remembered Google didn’t make it and that it used to be much better before they bought it.

And yes, money is quite literally subjective. That’s not a hotly debated subject, rather a cornerstone of all modern economic models. And complaining about wages makes sense, because we’re forced to live under this fragile system that directly dictates our well being, while heavily favoring making the world worse. Capitalism requires constant cashflow and it’ll use any tool (like inflation) to coerce people into complying. It literally can’t exists without shit like planned obsolescence or induced addiction as people being satisfied and contempt with their material possessions would hinder the flow of money.