Well, counterfactuals are tricky. In the fish example, if you compare to nobody selling fish at all, they are adding value by creating a market where there wasn't any before, even if it's in a monopolistic way. But if your alternative is a competitive fish market, maybe no value is added, but the monopoly is charging more for it.
Charging more is capturing consumer surplus value. If it weren't still worth the money, they wouldn't pay for the fish. The higher price more accurately reflects that value of the product to the people who still buy it. (Assuming they know what they're doing.)
Whether or not charging more is good or not depends on your point of view. Buyers and sellers have different opinions. I believe "charge more" is a slogan generally repeated approvingly around here when we're talking about developer salaries?
Here's an example of capturing consumer value that's considered relatively benign, good even: you can listen to a lot of music for free these days, but then Patreon came along and convinced a lot of people that artists should be paid more. The market price in a perfectly competitive market is that music should be free, but sometimes the fans themselves disagree with that.
It doesn't seem like there is any objective truth to the matter as to how much music is worth. There are only opinions. Sometimes you can do some math, but the input is opinions, so the output is aggregate opinions.
The same seems true of other prices. Costs usually set a floor. Consumer value is higher than that, but people disagree on what's "worth it."
Charging more is capturing consumer surplus value. If it weren't still worth the money, they wouldn't pay for the fish. The higher price more accurately reflects that value of the product to the people who still buy it. (Assuming they know what they're doing.)
Whether or not charging more is good or not depends on your point of view. Buyers and sellers have different opinions. I believe "charge more" is a slogan generally repeated approvingly around here when we're talking about developer salaries?
Here's an example of capturing consumer value that's considered relatively benign, good even: you can listen to a lot of music for free these days, but then Patreon came along and convinced a lot of people that artists should be paid more. The market price in a perfectly competitive market is that music should be free, but sometimes the fans themselves disagree with that.
It doesn't seem like there is any objective truth to the matter as to how much music is worth. There are only opinions. Sometimes you can do some math, but the input is opinions, so the output is aggregate opinions.
The same seems true of other prices. Costs usually set a floor. Consumer value is higher than that, but people disagree on what's "worth it."