> Economics has overdeveloped tools for reasoning based on price information in a "free" market of "rational" agents, and underdeveloped tools for actually valuing resources from first principles. The former corresponds to your first axis ("how much you want it") and the latter to the second axis ("how much it costs the world to let you have it"). That's why, when facing any hard problem, the economics solution is to assume that markets will figure it out i.e. the two axis are equivalent. (Further, whether the two should be conflated is actually a political decision, which is ignored in this sly exchange!)

This is not true at all. There is no conflation between "how much you want it" and "how much it costs the world to let you have it". Even the models taught in introductory undergraduate courses on economics are capable of addressing the "problems" you're describing.