The price of nothing and the value of nothing
The price of nothing and the value of nothing Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. ― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan money as a Procustes bed conciliating all human desires and needs Price is a mechanism optimising, for any level of total wealth, instantaneous localized optimal deployment of resources. People don’t grasp that, and politicians oppose it. See "it’s unfair that masks cost 10 $ if the manufacturing price is 12c !!1!”, all the while disregarding (or hiding, in the unlikely event that they knew what they are talking about) all the assumptions underlying their words: that goods can be locally produced, with materials readily available or sourced locally, using plants and machinery already in place, with jigs premade f