I was listening to Curt Jaimungal's recent interview with Stephen Wolfram. Wolfram dropped an interesting tidbit of an idea about the underlying foundation of "value" in economics. Because the one absolute limiting resource on every human being is time, things that are computationally reducible are valuable.
He gave an example. Given infinite time, we could make our own mobile phone. But they are valuable precisely because rather than gather all the raw materials, make all of the higher-order components, and assemble the phone ourselves, we can walk into a store and exchange currency for that finished good. This pattern recurs over and over.
So value comes from our ability do or get things that we would otherwise spend significant portions of our lives doing or making for ourselves.
He gave an example. Given infinite time, we could make our own mobile phone. But they are valuable precisely because rather than gather all the raw materials, make all of the higher-order components, and assemble the phone ourselves, we can walk into a store and exchange currency for that finished good. This pattern recurs over and over.
So value comes from our ability do or get things that we would otherwise spend significant portions of our lives doing or making for ourselves.
Attention it time.