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?

[Donk1]

​Well i believe it all comes down to how the economy runs things. Basically, at that point in time, water becomes way more valuable, which means if someone was to open a shop in the desert he would probably make millions. That is to say the value of anything is determined by the place and the economy.That said scarcity means limited availability of resources. In a way if the working population of man was to reduce, that means those who get employed would receive better treatment now than when there was a lot of manpower and folks willing to work. Best to say take countries in Asia for example, like Japan and South Korea, which have reduced populations due to low birth rates making workers scarce. My point here is that most times the economy becomes so large that scarcity becomes important.Overall when it comes down to the value of things both money and all it is decided by the same economy. So that's all.....

[Queentoshi]

In the economy scarcity beats usefulness every single time.

But a scarce object, product or even skill that nobody sees a need for or use for will be worthless even though it is scarce. People have to want a scarce object, product or skill for its usefulness for it to have value, that is demand makes scarce object, products or skills to have value. This is why if you are trying to make yourself into someone of high demand based on a skill, you have to look for a skill that there are not so many people in, and many people need it also. If it satisfies that simple criteria, it is a good skill to learn.

[Inior]

Indeed value is tied around things that are scarce but then before value can be tied to anything that is scarce, that thing has to have some sort of usefulness even if it’s not a basic necessity for survival. Let’s take gold for instance gold has no survival benefits yet it’s considered one of the most precious metal to humans because it doesn’t corrode irrespective of how many years it is kept in water or any environment. Then days graduates used to be valued in the labor market but now that we have a lot of them they are now getting underpaid because if they refuse the offer there are basically thousands of people out there willing to take that same payroll.

[Plutomanian]

Indeed value is tied around things that are scarce but then before value can be tied to anything that is scarce, that thing has to have some sort of usefulness even if it’s not a basic necessity for survival. Let’s take gold for instance gold has no survival benefits yet it’s considered one of the most precious metal to humans because it doesn’t corrode irrespective of how many years it is kept in water or any environment. Then days graduates used to be valued in the labor market but now that we have a lot of them they are now getting underpaid because if they refuse the offer there are basically thousands of people out there willing to take that same payroll.

I agree with you mate, scarcity alone doesn't give us the guarantee that the product will be valuable. We know the tricks that goes on in the open space and we get to do things our way because we already are aware of what it means for something to be valued. You used Gold in your reference, I'd safe Gold is not only valued because of its scarcity but also because of its durability, resistance against corrosion and it's lasting span in the world and also it's usefulness in the industry today.

We can come to graduates the number of students graduating out of higher institutions every year is amusing but where is the work? When there are lower graduates, the labour market tend to be open for everyone to work with good qualifications but nowadays, the labour market remained shut because of the number of graduates everyday.

[Odogwu-Blockchain]

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.

Money do not come to where it is valueless, you get money off signature campaign because you are creating value with your time, attention and energy. All these are currency you spend to create value that attract money into your wallet. I have not seen where you create value and money never follows, it's not happening anywhere.

You either choose to build value and never needs money with it, that's a choice.

[Gravitypull$]

You got me motivated OP. Time is our value based on how we manage it and what we use it for. It's sad that some people don't know this if not, they wouldn't sit down doing nothing. Your contribution in your workplace and the society is what will determine your worth. Your financial status is what will determine the kind of skill to learn and your level of education. However, if you find yourself anywhere just be serious with what you are doing and be positive. What we need to survive is the basic needs of life and nit treasures.

[Different patterns]

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.

This is a valid point you have made, many persons lack the basic knowledge needed to manage money and make good use of money because the problem of many is not majorly on income, it’s about how the are able to manage it and multiply the money with time because with time, you will realize that the same amount of money you are saying is not enough for you is the same amount of money another person use to build his own financial life and he or she is doing well, even though there may be several factors that may influence their situation but it means that, that same amount of money is enough to take care of someone’s needs and also help to multiply it. Another reason why this situation may happen is the lack of basic knowledge or understanding that’s needed to manage and multiply money, imagine someone earns 1million a month and he or she is complaining and saying that’s why he is not doing well financially and another person earns that same amount but he or she is able to solve basic problems and also invest wisely. Another reason is just discipline because many have the knowledge and exposure but can’t achieve financial stability because of discipline.

[RGBTC]

Another point not mentioned is that you might perceive the illusion of an oasis in the middle of a desert; and, in that state, you might even turn down an offer of a bottle of water for $5k.

Similarly, one might reject a job applicant or fire an employee who possesses rare, specialized skills; all because, amidst the current AI hype, there is a belief that such technologies possess the expertise of a professor in every conceivable field.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

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...

True, however, some skill needs money before someone can be able to learn it and when some people can not be able to raise the money they need to be able to learn that unique thing they want, they will end up settling for less, another thing too is that not everyone have the courage, passion and ability to do something that would give them the results they want, they can see others doing well and live the life they dream of and they will admire it but they are too tired to even continue trying until it works out. Individual difference is one thing about people, but I feel that if someone actually continue doing the right thing, providing value and staying put, it will one day pay them off but when the person give up top early, it will not be possible to see that result they want. So, apart thinking deep outside the box, it's to also have the courage, determination and passion for what you are about to do because it might not really get better just immediately, good things take time and when someone doesn't have that courage to stay put, it's a problem for them.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I suspect that this is a retelling of some kind of parable, movie, or something called a motivational speech.

OP, I've spent my valuable time reading your topic. What did I learn , and how did you help the world by writing this post? I don't know how many people will be able to read it, given the mistakes in it, and even more interesting is what they will learn from your message.

Is money important? Yes. Should one avoid wasting time? Yes, but it's questionable, given the availability of all the amenities that fill the world. But here I will correct your opinion about the injustice of the fact that physical labor is paid less than mental labor. There will always be a choice. Anyone can do the physical work; it's enough to show them once or twice. But to create something, you need talent, education, and, yes, a lack of laziness. You're right about that. Don't waste time, instead create yourself so you become in demand.

Everything could have been said more briefly.😉

[SuperBitMan]

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.

Money do not come to where it is valueless, you get money off signature campaign because you are creating value with your time, attention and energy. All these are currency you spend to create value that attract money into your wallet. I have not seen where you create value and money never follows, it's not happening anywhere.

You either choose to build value and never needs money with it, that's a choice.

I agree with you, money doesn’t go where it is valueless however, the part you mentioned about getting money from signature campaigns I think it’s not actually the way you explained it, people are in this forum to get into educative discussions and also learn, and they are doing that with their free time and even when they get into a signature campaign they only post here on their free time because they have other things they do.
I’m working and I visit this forum on my free time, people are getting paid by signature campaign because they are active on this forum on their free time, people are not putting energy and all there time on this forum, except you are not working and all your source of income is coming from this forum, I believe even theymos and the mods that get paid by the forum still have other job they do outside this forum.

Yeah, when you create value surely you can make money from it however it depends on the area of life or were it’s been created.

[Bit-Mj1014]

Your explanation is just like the justin Timberlake movie "in time", in the movie people don't age in looks, the time you have left is inscribed in your hand you buy stuff with the your time, when you work you get paid in time, your illustration reminded me of that movie, and thats how life works, time spent + the value of work done = the amount of money you earn.

[hafiztalha]

The value of a thing is determined when there is scarcity or when there is demand for that particular thing. Still, I don't think that if something is widely available then its usefulness becomes irrelevant. Water is accessible in different places and it is cheap  but there are areas where clean drinking water is not available and people are willing to pay a good amount for it.

The same case applies to human labor. High earnings are not based on working hard but that does not mean that people who are doing physical jobs are less important to society. We are based in society where those who generate good profit , those works are given more reward. Similarly, those who are earning little are not replaceable,  not having required amount of skills. The best way is to develop skills that are in demand and also understand that financial reward does not always reflect the real importance of someone work.

[I_Anime]

Value attracts value . That’s why in a space where a particular skill is saturated  there are still folks that will still make good morning with that same skill . For instance you found two graphic designers one has been In the graphic design industry for a while , and the other who took his time to learn and master the graph Skill fully to the point of creating his own unique style of design. And there’s a company looking for a good graphic designer , who do you thing they will go for , they will literally for the best . The one that has completely mastered it and can help them make their brand more visible. In such scenario they won’t bother to know how long the other folk has spent in the industry of graphic designing .