Originally opened by @mpvl in cuelang/cue#28
CL https://cue-review.googlesource.com/c/cue/+/1660 introduced an alternative semantics for default values that allow also default values to be fully associative, commutative, idempotent, and distributive.
This still needs to be implemented. The implementation should go hand in hand with tidying up and clarifying the semantics of references and the use of defaults in arithmetic and the combination thereof.