Understanding Value

Understanding Value by @meno on 3Speak

▶️ Watch on 3Speak --- Story time. I've been recording little vlogs, putting them out in the ether, linking back to hive, of course. I recorded this one today, and felt it was good enough to share....

Tags: #philosophy #anecdote #story #money #value #lesson

Transcript

It seems like almost a lifetime ago, but there was a time in my life when I worked at a music store. And one of the things that we did a lot, I did a lot, was deal with used instruments. My specialty was guitars. That's one of the reasons why I make them, why I love them. But I bought and sold for the company all sorts of things, pianos, keyboards, drums, you name it. I remember this one time this gentleman comes in with a keyboard that he thought was worth a lot of money. And when I expressed to him that the keyboard was not really that valuable, which is something that happens with synths, you know, they go out of fashion and new keyboards with new software are as what people want, he was almost offended as if I was trying to scam him. And of course I showed him, you know, what listings on the internet look like and all the stuff, but he just felt like I was trying to be dishonest. I remember that day a story my father told me, and it's a story that I think I can use or I've used a bunch of times to explain this notion that we have of value of things, because a lot of philosophies try to come up with a way to give value to an acid, a commodity, an item, and most of them sound pretty good on paper, but they don't work in reality. and I wanted to put that in the video because I think it's a cool little story. The story goes something like this. Let's say there's a guy named Larry, and he has this old horse that he's thinking about selling. He needs the money because, you know, things are not going well right now, and that is the only thing he can think of that he could sell to get out of the hole. He tells his friends that he's going to sell his old horse, a horse that he loves dearly. a horse that he believes is very, very valuable. And the friends mock him a little bit and ask him how much does he really think he's going to get for the horse. He looks at this horse with all the love in the world, because it's been with him for 20-something years, and says that he's sure that he can get a million dollars for the horse. It's a fair price. The friends, of course, laugh. They think he's not being serious, but... but he corrects him and says that he is, and not only that, that it's going to be easy to sell the horse. A couple weeks go by, and the horse is still tied in front of the property with a sign that says a million dollars, and, of course, there's been no bidders, and the friends are beginning to worry about the mental health state of their friend Larry. He's losing his marbles, after all. He thinks he can sell the horse for a million dollars. two more weeks go by and finally the horse is gone the two friends are driving by the property and see the tree where the horse was tied empty no more horse available so they walk inside surprised thinking that maybe larry came to his senses lower the price and sold the horse for a reasonable amount Surprise to find out that Larry says that he sold the horse for a million dollars, that he was able to get full asking price. The friends are dumbfounded. They can't believe somebody would pay a million dollars for that horse. One of the friends, though, still hesitating, still doubtful that Larry's telling the whole truth, asks Larry, how did he get paid? Was it check? Was it cash? The friend was even thinking maybe he got scammed with one of those fake checks. And Larry turns around and says, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to get scammed like that with a check that has no funds. I exchanged my $1 million horse for those two dogs over there, $500,000 each.

Comments

@agmoore: 😂 Jack and the Beanstalk? We sold a house a couple of years ago. My daughter had her heart set on a price, because we needed that price to buy the house we wanted. Our house was not in good shape. We painted, and washed, and tore up shrubs. We polished as best we could and slapped that price tag on the house. Realtors were skeptical. One offered 1/3 less than what my daughter was going for. My daughter persisted. Finally we found a realtor willing to ask our price. One potential buyer offered dramatically less than she wanted, at least 25% less. Two days later a man drove by, jumped out of his car, looked in the garage window and offered very close to asking. We were stunned, but waited. A few hours later he offered full price. What is something worth? It's not an objective value. This man had tried to buy a house in our neighborhood a few months before and missed out. He had a young child. We lived in a great school district. He wanted that house for his child. He wanted that school district for his child. And, he was a contractor, so he could afford to fix the house up. The house was not worth the money, but it was worth it to him. A really lucky day for us.

@chinito: :P so he DOUBLED his assets! yay!

@ijebest: Congratulations 👏🎉 it also turned out as he had expected. That's the power of believing in oneself.

@starkerz: Those two dogs better be more than 500K each for that horse! Posted via First Context

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