The ability to differentiate between value and price has a great impact on our lives. This idea is really important in my mind.

This is a central idea in the TV show Rick and Morty. In that world, you can buy anything you want from aliens, so the question is not what is possible, but what is valuable. Example: The reason we can't commit murder is because the laws against murder are written on stone tablets and/or we're afraid of what others will think. But the real reason is value: All life has value, and killing someone is destroying something of value. <br><br>The price of something is what you pay for it in return for its benefits. The value of something is the benefit you get. So with murder, the price is the consequences, but the value of life cannot be determined in a monetary system (and certainly not in the old stone tablet systems). Yet, humans have a strong urge to destroy life - not just human life but all life. I've got a dog, and he's so cute sometimes that he's driving me crazy. But I want him to live. I don't want him to suffer. That's value. <br><br>Now let's talk about the price. The ancient Israelites believed that the price of murder was death of the murderer (and apparently stoning by the village). This is the price of murder. It doesn't change the value of life because of the death of the murderer. <br><br>So maybe with this system the desire to just hurt others will go away because the consequence of murder is too high: death. <br><br>Our laws today are just as draconian, but the method of death is different, and the consequence of murder is still the death of the murderer. But this does not change the value of life. It's not about the value of life, it's about the price. So if we could reduce the cost of murder from death to maybe a long prison sentence or forced labor, would this change whatever drives the killer to kill? We don't know, but it may be worth trying.<br><br>The value question is more important than the price question.<br><br>Here is an example. A wealthy person may give her friend a $100 gift. A poor person may give his friend a $10 gift. The poor person may be putting a higher price on the gift than the wealthy person. But the poor person may also value more highly what he's giving than the wealthy person. In order to give any gift at all, the poor person had to give up something more valuable to her: groceries.<br><br>Finally, I want to talk about the ability to exchange value for price. What does it cost to buy a house in the suburbs? Well, a house is expensive and mortgaging it requires a lot of money or a good credit score. So a lot of people can't afford the price of a house. But anyone who wants one has a high value for a house in order to pursue it. Contrast with a tent. Anybody can afford a tent, but it has little value - we don't want to live in a tent, so we don't pursue it. <br><br>So in summary, we pursue things that have a high value and a price we can afford because we value it enough. And we don't pursue things that have a high value if the price is too high. The value question is more important than the price question, and the ability to differentiate one from the other is the difference between making good decisions and making bad decisions.<br><br>Edit: I want to add that this ability also determines if we make decisions that are good for us or not. Our decisions that are good for us are when the price is low and the value is high. Our decisions that are bad for us are when the price is expensive and the value is low.