Hayek on the Denigration of Economic Value (optional material, p. 1)
As Hayek points out in another context, the tendency to denigrate the importance of economic values results in part from "the erroneous belief that there are purely economic ends separate from the other ends of life." In reality, economic ends are inseparable from our other purposes; we value money, for example, "because it offers us the widest choice in enjoying the fruits of our efforts." The "contempt in which 'merely' economic considerations are often held," Hayek writes, is "in a sense ... quite justified in a market economy—but only in such a free economy":

"So long as we can freely dispose over our income and all our possessions, economic loss will always deprive us only of what we regard as the least important of the desires we were able to satisfy. A 'merely' economic loss is thus one whose effect we can still make fall on our less important needs, while when we say that the value of something we have lost is much greater than its economic value, or that it cannot even be estimated in economic terms, this means that we must bear the loss where it falls. And similarly with an economic gain. Economic changes, in other words, usually affect only the fringe, the 'margin,' of our needs."      Next page