WRITING: VALUE OR PRICE?

Value or Price?

Many confuse politics and spirituality. Many confuse Value and Price. Actually, they are all woven so tightly, sometimes it is impossible to separate the two. This article discusses money as energy, as an exchange, as a match to our individuality and sense of freedom. When one is ‘free’, one has a greater sense of connection to Spirit, to our Creator. Even if a person doesn’t believe in a higher power, they still fall into the domain of higher self-essence. Everybody deals with money. However they came across it, legally, illegally, inheritance, work… they trade it for something or other than itself. After all, the myth of the Garden of Eden was that the pair was cast out to toil and work for their keep; THE original Trade Barter. Anyone can hoard it for the future, or become obsessed with shopping on TV. Whatever the choice, conscious or unconscious, it is traded. So, the question becomes, how much of our soul is bartered with our money?

In this day and age when ‘leadership’) gathers to alter the basic freedoms and rights penned into our Constitution and Declaration of Independence… when the outcomes slaughter the common working man who labors to support a family and their home with decent food on the table… when governments condone the illicit handling of money by people that neither exchanged their personal energy turning their labor into dollars for material comforts and necessities… the time has come to stop and examine the motive power, the morals, and the values behind actions that have almost stopped the world from turning. It is a spiritual problem at best and an egotistical toxin of corruption when we forget who we really are.

Such is the following speech written by Ayn Rand in her treatise Atlas Shrugged. It appears to be a template of our times even though it hit the book stores in 1957. She took 12 years to write it, knew about the sinister design of the few ‘aristocratic’ arrogates who figured they could eliminate 90% of us and keep the remainder10% as slaves and servants… keeping the entire planet for themselves: They apply call themselves ‘the aristocrats that will inherit the world when the useless eaters are terminated’ (taken from a 2005 quote from a physician who treated one of them).

Please take some time to ponder the meaning of Fransico D’Aconia’s speech you are about to read. When our livelihood is eliminated through diabolical agendas: When our children cry from hunger: When people think they are entitled to get it all without putting out an iota of thought or energy to get it… where does that leave us as individuals and as a nation? Our foundation was ‘religious freedom? Is that political or is it Spiritual?

Think of this… It is not money that is the root of all evil. It is the love of money. And L O V E is a higher human quality, the core, the glue that holds this whole deal called life together. The word ‘Love’ used here, as quoted in the bible, really means G R E E D personified, by secretive manipulation of laws founded by our forefathers, based on spiritual precepts. How are our civil liberties and freedoms disappearing and what ramifications on our religious freedom to worship are taken away? There is so much we have taken for granted over time, that we have become oblivious of what we had and what we have lost. What ARE those inalienable rights so esteemed by men of vision? How was this the only country designed where citizens rule the government and not the other way around. Many foreign governments proclaim our Constitution to be the greatest document ever written upholding our God given inalienable rights and freedoms. Inalienable: ABSOLUTE, IMMUTABLE, NOT ABLE TO BE FORFEITED, UNASSALIABLE, INCONTROVERTIBLE, INDISPUTABLE, UNDENIABLE.

“Value comes in two flavors, intrinsic and collectively agreed upon.

Intrinsic value is best understood with an example like clean air or potable water. They have intrinsic value. We would die without them. Food and the rest of the “needs” matrix clearly have intrinsic value.

Value is defined as a concept of worth. So, even within “needs” and must-haves, value can vary. A seal-skin coat will have different “value” to an Eskimo [Alaska] compared to a Masai [Africa], as an example.

Point I am making is that value is intrinsic. Utility makes the value greater or lesser.

Price on the other hand is a whole other animal.

Price, first of all, is a complex derivative of value and demand. It can fluctuate based on many variables.

It’s a long topic, so let us just say that value is intrinsic and price is extrinsic.

And that is quite a realization and a mirror for the world we live in today.

We live in a world which has become blind to value and beholden to price.” Vivek Anand

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Aconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value… Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others.

Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow… Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money…

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth….”

Francisco’s speech goes on for several pages. He is expounding the value of the human thought process to produce goods and services in exchange for value, in this case, money. It is a global concept: From Donald Trump to ancient tribes… All goods and services are a direct trade-off for the mind of man and the Creator, co-creating with Inspiration. Man did not design the energy of growth in a seed, but, by golly, he DID realize, one day, that if you stuck it in the earth, you could reap the harvest. If that isn’t divine intervention, what is?

The question remains for us: How do we spend our money? What are we really trading? How often do we think of the thought process behind the product or services we barter daily and where would we be if all the value to that means of exchange was reduced to zero? We would have the goods, what’s left of them, with valueless dollars. Which feels better to you, which seems more equitable, which empowers you your freedom to choose and trade your work ethic and salary for the things you desire? Doesn’t the bible talk about tithing? Giving your 10%? What is that about? You and your relationship to money and God.

Give some thought to this idea that money is energy… YOUR energy… What you put in nine-hour days for, to pay bills, buy treasures and pleasures. Perhaps it all boils down to gratitude. Appreciate your power of exchange, your ability to provide the basics of living for yourself and family. Because, if you don’t value the minds behind the products, or the intrinsic value of life altering necessities, someone may come along and eliminate the essence of trading the material goods and services you love and need in your life. Think about it. Has Price replaced Value? Does everything in the world now have an instant gratification price tag?

“ 1. A professional sportsman makes on the order of a 1000 times the money a school-teacher makes.

An old person has no value in society anymore. They have been reduced to “price” needed to keep them clothed and fed in old-age-homes.
The stock-market used to be about gleaning the value of a company to determine it’s stock-price. Value led to price-discovery. Now, it’s a price arbitrage game. Value is meaningless (almost, soon to be completely gone).
The idea of “Branding” is born from the divergence between intrinsic value and perceived value. The greater the divergence, the more it distorts price.
We can put a price on anything in our lives. Value and Values in general are becoming hard or even impossible.
Value is garnered over time, like an egregore [is an occultconcept representing a certain non-physical entityt hat arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people] . Price is determined in the split-second (NOW!). In this age of tera-floppers, only price matters, value be damned.” Anand

Can you add more to this list. When you do, try to find the Value behind it, if there is one. It will alter the way you spend and save your money, and the way you think about the individuals who created and formed it, who converted unformed substance into form itself. Value or Price?