Value

Lately I've heard a lot of people talking about "the economy" and "markes" and "The industry"  putting them on graphs, and all that.  They act like these forces are like the forces of nature, they ebb and flow and you can't do anything but ride it out, or seek shelter by putting your money in a coffee can buried in the back yard.  

It really makes me stop and look at the basis for the whole thing.  It's value.  Value is something that many people don't really under stand.  Many marketers will probably give you some speal about value being benefits divided by cost or some nonsense.  I like to look at value as: What's it worth to you?  For example.  If you're in the middle of a desert, dying of exposure, no supplies, and you come across a shimmering pile of gold, Solid gold.  Well, if you're not disappointed that it's not water, you're an idiot.  In this situation, a wise man would gladly trade a mountain of solid gold for a drink of water.  When I give this example, lots of people say "I wouldn't!"  They are full of it.  

Either they truly value posessing gold more than their own life, or they have never really been thirsty.  And when you think about it for half a second valuing a posession requires you to value your life, because on this earth... "you can't take it with you"  so if you were going to effectively value all your posessions you are not capable of valuing them more than your life.  This puts a cap on the value of any posession.  A sane person cannot value any posession more than their own life.  If they do, they cease to be sane.  

lets say you're there, with your big pile of gold, more than you could possibly carry out, heck, in this situation it's looking like you're not getting out at all gold or no!  Then along comes this trader on camel back, and you offer him ten percent for a drink of water and a ride out with your gold.  Most people I've actually presented this question to say, as the trader, sure they'd do it!  These people are either extremely generous or not shrewd at all, or again, they've never been thirsty.  A shrewd trader would point out that you're screwed without him. "market forces" are in his favor, your posession of the gold depends on his water and transportation.  Indeed your LIFE depends on his water and transport.  A smart trader would assess if he has the camel power to pack all the gold out, and offer you a trade of as much gold as he can carry out for a bag of water (assuming he has spare water).  This is not a cruel trade.  You walked in, you have no water, so, with water, you can walk your butt out, and he gets the gold.  If you say NO to this situation, what happens?  

Lots of people think they could convince my shrewd trader to come down on his price.  They are very wrong.  They haven't calculated the values at stake.  If you say no, YOU DIE!  At which point you won't be posessing anything.  The trader, being shrewd as he is, would say "he chose death.  I offered him water, and he wasn't willing to trade his gold for his life"  And you are lucky my trader is shrewd and a good man.  A bad man would just walk on by, and make a note of the location, come back later, and take the gold that is no longer yours, because you're dead and dead people own nothing.  

This is the underlying principle of all transactions.  As a farmer I've asked people if they would pay $1000 for a loaf of bread, everyone I've asked has said no.  If I have the only loaf of bread you've seen in a year, and you have the cash, you'd pony it up in a heartbeat.  

The point I'm making here is value is completely arbitrary.  It is not "the price of this is going up" or, "the price of that is going down"  prices don't rise or fall, the primary purchasers value it differently from moment to moment.  

A brewer needs barley to brew.  It's his livlihood.  Since no one values their things more than their life, he will pay as much as he has to for barley, but not a cent more, because he is shrewd, and not generous... at least, not to barley growers.  He helps orphans, so he is generous.  Just... none of those orphans grow barley.

So when everyone has barley, he can basically find the guy who values his barley LEAST, or rather needs money more than barley to survive, and will trade with that guy, giving him the scant amount of money he is so desparate for.  

But when only one man has barley, the tables are turned.  The barley grower will look at all the brewers to find the one who values his barley much more than his money.  The desparate one. 

With desparation comes a value increase.  It's human nature.  You actually could choose to not value something when you are desparate... But you are desparate for a reason.  you either need to change your value system, (that is if the barley grower decided he didn't need money that bad right now, so he's not going to sell his barley that cheap)  or pony up the extra expense.  

This is the basic reason that in 2002, I drove a winding road through idaho, and we wisely filled up before we left Montana.  Half way down that 100 mile winding road through nowhere, there was a gas station.  In 2002, gasoline here was nearly 5 dollars per gallon.  Why?  Because if your tank says "E" you are desparate... Or you're a sheister in a U-haul who wasn't going to fill it with gas anyway.  

This also explains tourist traps.  The people in the community will put up with higher prices because collectively the community is making money on the people who don't live there and are DESPARATE for stuff so they'll pay triple the price a sane person would for sandwich making.  

Or they think they are having a unique or rare experience fishing here, or boating here, or having a camp fire in this man-made fire ring in the middle of this hand-planted forest here.  At any rate they will pay the price for the essentials to their unique or rare experience.  A 10 dollar fishing hook and 20 dollar worms.  50 bucks an hour boat rental, 10 dollar a bundle fire wood that is drier than kiln-dried lumber and will spontaneously combust and be consumed in less than 5 minutes. 

Why is our "economy" going down?  It could be nothing more than people, en masse, heard the economy was going down and they might lose their job.  They also have a 10,000 dollar credit card debt that's accumulating at 20 percent interest.  If they lose their job, Visa owns them.  They become desparate.  What will they do?  They suddenly see all their current posessions as under threat, or a possibility of them being under threat in the future.  And since the economy is bad, we can't put our money in a bank or stock market,  a few of those just went under, you know!  So he saves it in his sock drawer, under his mattress, in a coffee can buried in his back yard, and he pays visa for money he already spent so if he loses his job, no one can take what he already has.  His covetousness for the things he doesn't have goes out the window because he knows he can't even keep what he does have at this point.   As he buries and squirrels away his money and pays for the things he already has, this money falls off the economists grid.  They see the money spent, maybe even the money saved in a bank.  But not the money in your sock drawer.  So they panic, money is disappearing!  consumer confidence is down!  EEEEEEK!

What no one ever asks are things like "should his confidence be down?"  He's been over extended for five years!  He's always been in danger of losing everything!  His confidence should have dropped a long time ago, but loan extensions and new lines of credit kept him cocky!  There's times when a consumer shouldn't be confident.  Theres a time to be wise. 

If you're wise, at least in my mind, you'd take a moment to notice that all this stuff you're getting suposedly to "enrich your life"  is vanity and what you're really doing is trading hours of your life for stuff to enrich the life you just gave away!  

I don't pay for television service.  Because I value all the time it would take me to earn the extra money more than I value the entertainment.  And eventually you enter a paradox like many people I know, who own so much hunting gear that they haven't paid for, they spend all season working to pay for it.   Who have so many awesome cars that they spend into the midnight hours working to pay for them, and what are they doing while they are working?  NOT hunting, NOT driving, they are not enjoying the things they purchased for enjoyment!  Why would I want to buy a harley?  I could buy a honda for WAY cheaper, and my butt can't tell the difference when it's perched on there.  Rather, why wouldn't I buy an x-box?  I can drink beer while I do that, and it's cheaper than both!  Ultimately it is more ENRICHING because I gain more benefit because it costs less.  

What is value?  It's the price you'll pay.  Why you pay it is totally arbitrary and up to you, but it is the price you will pay, even for an item you will spend the rest of your life paying for so you can never use it.  

It kind of puts a new perspective on those cliches that we all like to lie about but our lives say different:  "I value my family most"  "I value Jesus most"  

Do you trade your life for your family?   Even if you are trading your life to pay for your families needs and desires,  what does your family want and need most?  probably you!  Because you are their family, so while family is your excuse for working all the time you are paradoxically neglecting your family to work.  I'd say you value your pride, the pride of your family having "nice things"  or your pride of being a "selfless hard worker"  more than you value your family.  You selfish jerk.   

If you value Jesus most, why does nothing you earn go to him.  Are you going to pull the "Jesus wants me most"  card?  If so I challenge you that you aren't even giving him yourself.  Heck, you won't even give him your spare time!  you people sicken me.  What's worse is that I'm one of you people. 

In close the only things you can value more than your own life are the things you can maintain posession of once it's lost.  Jesus fits this category... But if you value it more than your life, why do you not trade your life for it, but do trade your life for things that you can't sanely value more than your life? 

People are crazy.  That's the only answer I've found. 

Prove Yourself to God

I remember hearing in a movie somewhere a line that went like this:

"Where is God?"

"Maybe instead of making God prove himself to us, we need to prove ourselves to God"  

I find this statement flawed at base from a Biblical standpoint.  Some examples like Gideon, Moses, and multiple followers of Jesus show that God is not opposed to proving himself... When it will actually make a difference.  Most of the time when someone asks where is God, they are standing in broad daylight with a blindfold on, saying "where is the sun!?!"  They are like an alzheimer's unit hiding their own easter eggs.  They hide the truth from themselves and complain that they cannot find it.

The followup that we need to prove ourselves to God is a disasterous line of thought.  First off, we can never measure up to God's standards.  Paul points out in Romans that we can't even stand up to our own standards.  Which of us could stand if our own standards of Good were immortalized on stone tablets and then we were judged by them?  Certainly not I!

How much more lost are we then when standing against God's perfection?  Even if we ignored the foolishness of it, and took a standpoint of borrow a penny here, pay back a penny there to God, and we come out even, we would have a hard time coming out even.  Let's ignore the fact that we are here to Love God all the time and do the good he has previously provided for us to do all the time, and make the false assumption that we can act positively, negatively, or neutral in any situation.  We can't, but for the sake of arguement, lets say we can.  

We are still stuck, because it is God, not us who determines where the pennies lie.  Like a babysitter that lets the kids draw on the walls, and the parents determine that to even out this iniquity you have to do the dishes, we foolishly prefer to try to whitewash the wood paneled wall to pay them back.  But when the parents arrive, what will they say?  You have failed, because not only did you let the kids draw on the wall, you then tried to hide it from us!  

We have this nasty habit of trying to fix things our way instead of doing things God's way.  I was brought to this line of thought by my devotions in Deuteronomy 1.  Deuteronomy is kind of Moses' recap to the Jews of their current situation, as their generation is "screwed" and their children are all that get to go into the promised land. 

Here's the deal, God gets the Jews out of Egypt through miraculous plagues against their captors, he pulls them across the Red Sea while they are being pursued by the Egyptian Army, simultaneously delivering Israel out of Egypt and destroying the following forces.  He then feeds them, providing meat, bread and water miraculously, on a daily basis.  He makes a covenant with them, shows them special favor in battles, brings them to the steps of the promised land!  Sounds like a pretty awesome deal, right?  What would any of us give to get to see even ONE of these great acts in our lifetimes?  This generation saw EVERY ONE of these miracles, and what do they do?  

"Lets send out spies" Because you know, God might be holding out on us, this "land of milk and honey"  well, it may not be all it's cracked up to be, and what if the other team has a good defensive line?  

The spies go out, and 10 of the 12 come back with this report "The land over there, is awesome!  but we'll never be able to kick the people out, there's giants, angel/human hybrids that are immortal, and we'll get our butts handed to us, so let's not bother"  And Israel despairs.  

God, at this point, is understandably pissed.  He's led these whining complaining irritating people out of slavery, across uncrossable deserts, through a sea!  He's defeated one of the most formidible nations ON EARTH for them single handedly without one of them taking up arms, and now they are afraid of a few measly city states?  As if he's not big enough to handle them?   Fine! have it your way!  You don't want in?  Great!  I won't let you in!  You can all DIE, and I'll show your children special favor and let them in, even though they didn't get to see all the awesome stuff I just did for you guys.  

So what do the people do?  Do they listen to God and go to the desert to hurry up and die so their kids can get the benefits of the promised land?  Of course not, we're humans!  They said "maybe God doesn't need to prove himself to us, maybe we need to prove ourselves to him!"  

"Hey I know how, lets go do the thing he told us to do in the first place, you know before he told us we could have what we wanted and die in the desert!"

"Yah, that's a great idea, it'll show him we're strong enough and trusting enough to be his people, there's no way he's going to have us all die without entering the promised land then!" 

Moses, of course, warns them that God's not going with them and they are all going to die.  But what do they do?  They go throw rocks at the big kids, and they get their butts kicked "from Seir all the way to Hormah"  I did my best to try to figure this out, Seir doesn't exist any more and I can't find it on a map, but we know it's "in the hill country"  so I'm figuring somewhere a bit south west of Jerusalem to be generous, and Hormah is estimated to be about half way down the dead sea, and about 15 miles out from the coast, I've seen it farther south on some atlases of the time.  Using a kind estimation, they got slaughtered for about 35 miles.  For a city's forces, this is pretty incredible.  These guys chased them what would take a single man well loaded 2 to 3 days to travel.  They must have been doing pretty well to chase them out that far from home, willing to risk getting cut off from supplies, or be 2 days out in the event of a secondary attack on the city.  

The point is that God doesn't want us to Prove ourselves, God just wants us to do what he says the first time.  He loves us and wants what's best for us, and just wants us to love him and trust him, that he's not holding out on us.  There is no more than what God has to offer us.  And no matter what we do, we can't prove ourselves to God, and if we're honestly trusting, he's not going to have to prove himself to us.  And in my experience, that is the atmosphere where really remarkable things happen, where I am trusting enough that I'm not suprised by God coming through.