Can a person's worth to society be quantified?

[Yelnoc]

Well, everybody assigns groups of people rough values on first sight; it's called stereotyping.  The idea that stereotyping can be refined to a scientific discipline should come as no surprise.  Data mining companies already exist to track your every move on the internet, constantly building a profile of you for add targeting.  I don't know why a government could not take that data and run it through an algorithm to assign you a "value" based upon certain measurements.

Would such a "value" mean anything?  It would certainly have any real world ramifications.  We have already seen something similar with Klout scores, where tweet-padders get prices reduced on goods and services.  If the government or major corporations were to assigns scores based upon all of the data that miners collect on each one of us, the consequences could be much more profound.  Imagine if you were denied higher education because your hypothetical "score" was too low.

None of that is to say that such a score would be meaningful from a philosophical perspective.  You are you, and comparing one person proves little.  But humans will be humans, and I worry attempts to assign people artificial values without their knowledge is one surprise the future has in store for us.