That value is not absolute. That's just the value to me as his or her current employer. The same receptionist would have different value to an employer with a different cost structure. This is why an intermediary like price is required.
> The older I get, the more I think that "value" (our social evaluation of worth) should be based on nothing more than hours of labor.
> An hour of labor from someone with a 130-IQ might carry a higher price on the market than an hour of labor from someone with a 90-IQ
1. These two statements are fundamentally at odds. The mere existence of a market price directly implies that some number of market participants have made their own judgments about the value (to them) of that hour of time.
2. "hours of labor == value" is the fallacy behind make-work programs where people effectively dig ditches and then fill them back up. There's nothing changed when they're done; how do you capture that economically?