Let's just imagine you find yourself in a desert, and you have been there for three days without water, And we All know how scorcher the dersert is. And then someone walk up to you holding a cold bottle of water in one hand and a flawless, million dollar diamond on the other hand, which one will you grab? I'm sure you wouldn't even look at the diamond at that point, the water is Worth everything, and the shiny diamond is completely useless. Yet back in the city, water are being sold for pennies while that same rock is locked in a bulletproof glass case with armed guards standing next to it.
Very few people on earth can write a complex artificial intelligence code or score a winning goal in front of 60 millions live viewers. Because their skills is rare And affects millions of people at once, their values skyrockets.
Someone will ask where does money fit into this? At the end of the day, paper bills and numbers on a mobile banking application have zero real values on their own. You can't eat a banknote or build a house out of coins. Money is simply frozen time and trust. For example when you work for five hours, you just traded five hours of your actual life for a piece of paper. That money is like a receipt proving to the society. "I gave five hours of my entire energy to help someone else, so now society owes me five hours of someone else energy in return.
When you spend that money on haircut, food or phone data.you are really trading your past time for the barber's, farmers or engineer's time..
You need food and water to live, so it's a very weird example you put forward about basically being on the edge of death with water offered to you. It has nothing to do with day to day life, our salaries or what we choose to spend money on. Back in the real world, the choices are do you spend 50 cent on some noodles or $200 on one of the best steaks out there? It's a completely different choice compared to life or death. Most people spend their whole lives making choices that will make them more financially stable or less. If you're on minimum wage it can often be hard to even contemplate having spare funds, however if you're an exec you might be saving tens of thousands a month yet still be able to spend money that others wouldn't spend in a year.. or ten. Not sure what the moral of your story is meant to be?
The OP actually made a great point, he did make use of water and diamond as an example for more understanding and clarification. And I actually get his point. Water is actually very important in our lives, and it is universally available to everyone at cheaper and affordable price, the reason why it is so cheap is because of it availability. Diamond is so expensive because of its Scarcity and it is very rare.
Time is the most important and valuable thing in our lives, and how we spend it matters alot. The OP is clearly referring to economic interdependency. We always sacrifice our time and energy to produce value, through the exchange of time, skills, labour and resources to ensure others people's stability through our stability.
Every profession, job or work receives different amount of salary, they don't earn equally or have equal benefits. What the OP is trying to explain is that, if they are a lots of people that does what you do for a living, you might earn small amount of money at the end of the day, because if you refuse to accept what they are willing to pay you, they can easily replace you. But in a situation where it is hard to find someone for replacement, they will definitely fulfill your demands. Sometimes people only see the value of work/ skills when they are less people doing that work.
