3 How Meaning Redirects Value (Without Grounding It)

Meaning does not ground value.

But it can redirect it.

This is the precise, easily-missed role of semiotic systems in fields of coordination. They do not generate value flows, nor do they determine what ultimately sustains a field. What they do is modulate the pathways through which value moves, by shaping expectations, timing, and permissible action.

Meaning functions as an interface.

By stabilising shared orientations, meaning allows value to travel further, faster, and more predictably than local responsiveness alone would permit. Contracts extend trust across time. Narratives align effort across distance. Categories compress complexity so coordination can scale.

None of this creates value. It re-routes readiness.

This distinction matters because it explains both the power and the danger of meaning.

When semiotic systems remain responsive to value pressures, they increase a field’s adaptive range. They act as prosthetics for coordination, enabling forms of collective life that would otherwise be impossible.

But meaning never touches value directly. It operates one level removed, through selection effects. Certain behaviours become intelligible, legitimate, or expected; others fade from view. Value flows follow these channels not because meaning commands them, but because coordination is cheaper, safer, or faster along intelligible paths.

This is why meaning feels foundational when it works.

The illusion arises from leverage, not origin.

The same mechanism explains failure. When meanings stabilise too tightly, they lock value into obsolete pathways. Pressures continue to build, but the available routes no longer register them. Coordination degrades even as meaning appears intact.

Crucially, this is not a representational error. The problem is not that meaning misdescribes value. The problem is that value cannot speak back.

Meaning redirects value without grounding it, and therefore cannot self-correct. It requires friction from the field—breakdown, resistance, leakage—to remain revisable.

The diagnostic question is not “Is this meaning true?”

It is:

Does this meaning still allow value to move where it needs to move?

When the answer is no, refinement is useless.

Only re-opening the interface will do.

Meaning is powerful precisely because it is indirect.

And that is why it must never be mistaken for a foundation.