I think this is an important question. Doomberg recently mocked the shit out of efforts to price aspects of nature in an article about natural asset companies. From what I read of the article, it sounds like NACs are unworkable and perhaps ill-motivated, but it's also true that one of the biggest dangers -- perhaps the single biggest one -- of the modern world is that people think that things that don't have prices also have no value. Or they don't really think this, but the machinery of capitalism compels the most powerful entities in the world to act accordingly. Any effort to solve that problem should be taken seriously.

But wrt what makes prices special: imo, it's that they roll up such gigantic and diffuse kinds of value and instantiate that massive vector into a single number that people can think with. Which means that everything pertaining to price carries that complex bouquet with it -- it's inherently compelling, the perfect psychological racoon trap.