standard of value

Not everyone holds human life as their standard of value, and people often argue that things are right or wrong for reasons other than the ways they benefit or harm human beings.

From Forbes ● Jan. 29, 2015

Many leading environmental thinkers, including those who predict fossil fuel catastrophe, hold as their standard of value what they call “pristine” nature or wilderness—nature unaltered by man.

From Forbes ● Jan. 29, 2015

“Its life is the standard of value directing its actions,” Rand wrote, “it acts automatically to further its life and cannot act for its own destruction.”

From Scientific American ● Oct. 5, 2012

"Thus," he said, "over the whole area of the British Empire and over a very wide and important area of the world there has been established at once one uniform standard of value."

From Time Magazine Archive

Jevons, "Money and Exchange," chapter 6, says: In respect to steadiness of value the metals are probably less satisfactory, regarded as a standard of value, than many other commodities, such as corn.

From Money: Speech of Hon. John P. Jones, of Nevada, On the Free Coinage of Silver; in the United States Senate, May 12 and 13, 1890 by John P. (John Percival) Jones