MONEY, WORK & VALUE

[Prince patrick]

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.

That bizarre contradiction is the secret heart of money, work And value. Most people thinks things are expensive because are they useful, or that people get paid well because they work hard. In reality, the economy doesn't care how hard you sweat, it cares more about how rare and irreplaceable what you offer is.

Think about that water And diamond again, every human being on earth drinks water to stay alive. Yet it is cheap because nature gives us ocean, rivers and rains of it. Diamond do absolutely nothing to keep you alive, there was a time it didn't even have value, unlike water that has had value from the beginning of human existence. Yet diamond cost a fortune because they are trapped miles underground and hard to find. In the economy scarcity beats usefulness every single time. The exact same rules explained why a plain T shirt $8 at the local market or roadside, while the exact same T shirt with a tiny crocodile, swoosh, or designed logo stitched into the chest suddenly sells for $100. You aren't paying $92 extra for better thread; you are paying for a story,  the status, and the feeling of belonging to a club that not everyone can afford to enter.

This rules of scarcity doesn't just decide the price of clothes and rocks-it decide how much human beings get paid for their work. Look around your neighborhood And community, The people doing the hardest physical labor- carrying heavy blocks under the hot sun, farming crops or sweeping the streets often earns lowest wages. Meanwhile a software engineer sitting in an air conditioner room typing code, or a footballer kicking a ball on a television, can make more in a single week than a construction worker makes in 8 years. That feels unfair until you look at how the economy measures values. Sadly the economy doesn't pay your efforts, it pays you for the scale of problems you can solve and how easily you can be replaced. Anyone with two hands and physical strength can be trained to carry blocks in the afternoon, so there is a massive supply of people who can actually do that job.

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..

Once you see the world this way, everything changes and you will stop asking, "how do I work harder? And start asking, what rare skills can I learn that solves a big problem for a lot of people?" Because in life, your time is the real currency you are born with and the smartest thing you can do is to make sure you don't trade it for a cheap price...

[ColdLava40]

This is a very interesting point of view because, realistically, money is only valuable under certain circumstances.

Just as you said, in a situation where the world is on fire, it may no longer matter how many assets you own. Everyone will start looking for valuable things they can trade for survival. We can see this happening during times of war.

Indeed, this shows that wealth may be valuable at certain points in life but not necessarily at all times.

That is why you should focus on building not just wealth but also a meaningful life while chasing money, so you can have something valuable beyond just financial success.

[abhiseshakana]

Agree that scarcity is a determinant of value in the market, but from your analogy shortage of professionals is the result of a value creation process. I see human basic skills as water which can be obtained for free along with the journey of our lives. But do not forget, drinking water whether from a well or in the form of mineral water requires some effort to obtain, there are refining and distribution costs.  If we want become rare and become a person that difficult to replace, we must go through a long process involving education, certification, and the accumulation of experience, or even tired of having many parties depend or rely on us, a path that does not come cheap. Even though diamonds are no longer expensive these days, The diamond industry has been devastated by Chinese synthetic diamonds. I think , diamonds become sellable & valuable not only because they are difficult to find in the ground, but also because they undergo a precise process of cutting and polishing. Without other show our qualifications, competencies, and expertise ,we are merely a raw stone that lacks significant market value.

The next question will be,  how we can have those rare skill ? What drives us make investment to build qualifications and scarcity ? The answer we need a visionary mindset skill. With this skill we willing to sacrifice time, effort, and resources now in order to build competencies that will be in demand by the market in the future.

To get those visionary mindset super power we need shifting the focus of hard work toward a roadmap for the next five years, of course with deliberate investment of time and income made consciously into learning, obtaining certifications, or entering challenging environments, all with the aim of raising one’s own qualification standards. On these VUCA world we need to evaluate regularly to what extent their competencies remain relevant, and which areas need improvement so that they are not easily replaced. The next battle especially for average people or who living in poverty how can we manage to cultivate rare expertise if the focus is solely on surviving today?

[Davidloki]

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.

In every business model, bitcoin also included, scarcity is one of the factors that drives the price of an item and that is als relatable with the instance you created. Water is almost everywhere on earth so you would not sell a sachet of water for huge amount when it can be easily gotten anywhere.

The instance you created is valid and I totally understand it, water is not given much relevance or importance as it should because of it's price. You could also take an instance where water is readily available but there is hunger in the land, at that point the diamond is worth more than the water. You could say that every situation places an item as more important over another despite the price or value.

[Cryptomultiplier]

As much as the last was long, it was really insightful and made me had a deep thought myself because what we are born into and made to learn and do in the form of work, just to survive is a different kettle of fish altogether.
For one to have value and make more money from it, they must indeed learn to build skills that are rare like the instance of finding water in the desert and this ensures more money because of the impact of the value created and offered.

One must also learn to understand that more money comes to those who can solve problems that are rare and not a product of man power with hard labour, hence the statement, work smart, not work hard.

Lastly, what ever money one earns must be put to multiplication. The money you have must be able to produce or give birth to more money by investment in the right things not by spending it on luxurious lifestyle or liabilities, but on assets with good returns on investment.

[Fortify]

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?