Just a Question

Snap the belief that price means much. Especially if it relates to your salary or your worth. All price is, is a clearing mechanism. A device. A tool. Valuing things is ridiculously hard. You can not quantify everything, and we literally (not the sarcastic literally which means not literally), see the world differently.

You don't have to quantify everything. A price is simply a device of exchange. If two people swap something and both are happy. One thinks the thing is worth more than the price, and one believes it is worth less. BOTH are correct. Because both are correct, there is more value after the transaction. How much more? It doesn't matter. More is the only thing that matters.

If one of the parties is unhappy, then and only then is it a problem. Adam Smith Capitalism signified the shift from Mercantilism. Under Mercantilism exchange was a war. Win-Lose wealth extraction and accumulation. France doing well meant England doing badly. War. Portugal doing well meant the Dutch doing badly. War. War. War. War.

Trading replaced raiding. Raiding is 'wealth extraction'. Whatever the thing is shifts from one party to another minus the lives lost in the process.

You, and only you, are able to see the world in the way you do. You, and only you, value things in the way you do. Use the numbers like you use words. As crude tools to engage with the world. Crude tools that aren't enough.

Don't think of price/salary as an answer. It is, and always will be, just a question. A question that replaced gunships.

French Sea Port - Claude Lorrain

1639 Mercantilism