Million Dollar Watch

A few years ago we had the good fortune to find ourselves in London, and my wife wanted to go to Harrod's, the famous department store.  Once in there we wandered off in different directions, and I, having no particular destination in mind, wandered into the jewelry section.  Now I do have a weakness for watches, mostly because I'm a tool and gadget guy, and there are now watches that can do everything but make toast.  And they can be very beautiful objects as well. 

Harrod's had some gorgeous stuff, but almost immediately I got hit with sticker shock.  Knowing that I wouldn't be buying anything, I decided to find the most expensive watch in the place. I did. With the help of my trusty calculator, I soon figured out that it was selling for a cool million bucks.  Okay, it was pretty.  Lots of diamonds and such.  But I started to wonder what anybody would want with a million-dollar watch.

I came up with two reasons: 1) it was beautiful, and 2) "because I can afford it and you can't".  There it was: another example of how money informs our lives.  Wealth is another way of saying, "I'm better than you.". In a world without money and where we're devoted to working do ensure that everybody has enough, such a watch might still exist, but the value would come from somewhere else, and its message would be different.

Things like diamonds that are scarce and beautiful would still be valued higher than, say, beautiful pieces of quartz, which are relatively plentiful and perhaps less prized as beautiful.  

Now let's say that I've been able, in the absence of money, to persuade some people to undertake the nasty and dangerous business of mining diamonds, perhaps by making it a lot less nasty and dangerous, but that's another whole set of ideas, so I digressed.  At any rate, I now have a quantity of beautiful diamonds and am now in the enviable position of choosing who would be best to receive them.  Am I just going to stand on a street corner and hand them out to passers-by? There's nothing to stop me, but if I value them for their beauty and rarity, I'm probably not.  I'm going to think about giving them to someone who can enhance their beauty.  I'm going to be thinking about people like jewelry makers and watch makers.  In fact, I'm probably going to try to get them into the hands of the best ones I know, people who do high-quality work.  If I've still got a lot of ego, it'll be about bragging rights: "I'm a regular supplier of diamonds to Madam Whoever, the finest watch-maker in the area." How big the "area" is will be directly proportional to the size of my ego.

If I don't have such an ego, I'm stll going to be trying to get them to high-quality workers who will enhance their beauty so I and others can appreciate it. 

So value doesn't disappear along with money, it's just that it's no longer hiding behind the smoke screen of money. It's out in the open pointing to its true sources, beauty and rarity.  Surprised?