How does anyone make any kind of value judgment?

If something's more value-able to someone than to its current owner, then there will exist a mutually agreeable price at which that someone will be able purchase that something. Beyond that...?

I don’t think that’s the sort of value that’s relevant here.

Here’s a value judgment for you: rent-seeking is evil.

It's unproductive and inefficient compared to any alternative, but calling it "evil" requires that the result be a monopoly power, and the only monopolies in the scenario here are the government itself and any exclusive contracts it may grant to private entities. These are evil, I'll agree.

But in other circumstances, the more general forms of rent-seeking can be a way to re-internalize an externality (e.g. a quantum of atmosphere that a factory could pollute), and is thereby critical to preventing "tragedy-of-the-commons"-style scenarios without violence such as rationing.

Don't you want to be able to protect the environment better than the EPA's incompetence and corruption could possibly hope to?