Thank you for the thoughtful comments, Max. Here are three observations.
1. Our figure uses replacement cost because, in principle, this is what national-account statisticians use to impute the ‘real capital stock’ (= replacement cost / price index of investment goods). In other words, when economic researchers – be they NC or heterodox – use the ‘real capital stock’, they use not its utils or SNALT content, but the capitalized price of ‘capital goods’, corrected, or so they believe, for price changes. And since this ‘real’ measurement template applies not only to capital goods, but to all commodities, it follows that value theories are not only conceptually circular/arbitrary but also lack an objective measure to quantify the ‘real economy’ they theorize.
2. Why does the replacement cost of the capital stock oscillate inversely with corporate capitalization? Although we haven’t researched this question, one possible answer is the co-movement of inflation and interest rates, which tends to have a positive effect on the replacement cost of the capital stock and a negative impact on corporate capitalization.
3. You suggest that established heterodox political economists are busy analyzing the ‘distortions’ of finance and other extra-economic ills and are unaware of or indifferent to the fact that they do not have a consistent theory of value to stand on. I agree – but, based on our long experience, I don’t think this is a trap we can easily trick or lure them out of. We are likely to be better received by younger thinkers — though even here, the window of opportunity tends to close rather quickly.