The Harm of Value Capture

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Paradigmatic cases of value capture occur when the rich and subtle object of a subject’s valuing attitudes is supplanted by the flat and coarse-grained values of an institutional metric that they have voluntarily accepted (e.g., the shift from valuing a healthier lifestyle to valuing taking 10,000 steps per day). Such shifts strike us as bad for the subjects who undergo them, but there is no agreement about how to characterize this harm. I argue that the harm of value capture is best explained by a desire-based account and that this result, in turn, provides an additional reason to accept a desire-based theory of welfare more generally.