There is a difference between the value of information and the price of that information.
Using value to determine undercompensation ignores that markets work on price, and often things of low intrinsic value are priced higher than others with high intrinsic value.
An encyclopedia with broad coverage clearly has greater intrinsic value than a Star Wars Blu-ray, yet the market has priced Star Wars Blu-rays as more expensive.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is subjective. Any item has no value unless an observer is present to value it. An, unsurprisingly, different observers will value the object differently, often wildly so.
Price is an extremely rough heuristic on the median or average valuation of an object. However, the majority can often be short-sighted at times, leading those who are looking more longer term to make statements like "the price doesn't reflect the intrinsic value of this thing". But even then, the big picture thinkers are of course assuming that the long view is the "correct view", when really, there is no single "correct view". How would one even go about attempting to define such a thing? It's all subjective.
Your point is a good one, though I'd say that calling it all subjective takes it too far.
If the outcome of long view -- ie, valuing education and information over watching star wars -- is less poverty, more self-reliance, the ability of a population to provide better for basic biological needs like food and water and shelter, then what you're really looking at isn't a subjective difference of value systems, but a question of delaying gratification.
That is, sure the price of "star wars" is higher because people would rather watch star wars most of the time than put in two hours towards, say, a 500-hour education project that's going to benefit them in the long run. Yet those same people would rather live in the future where they did have those skills.
In that sense, there is such a thing as intrinsic value, and its basis is shared human biology and universal needs. Asking what behaviors and choices ultimately provide for those needs can be objective, at least to a degree.
Would you say that the price to save a life equally matches the value of a life? Doesn't this show a disparity between the "market value" of something and its actual value?
