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Relative Value Quotes

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Relative Value Quotes

“In one of his later volumes, Earth, book XXXV, Pliny tells the story of a goldsmith who brought an unusual dinner plate to the court of Emperor Tiberius. The plate was a stunner, made from a new metal, very light, shiny, almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith claimed he’d extracted it from plain clay, using a secret technique, the formula known only to himself and the gods. Tiberius, though, was a little concerned. The emperor was one of Rome’s great generals, a warmonger who conquered most of what is now Europe and amassed a fortune of gold and silver along the way. He was also a financial expert who knew the value of his treasure would seriously decline if people suddenly had access to a shiny new metal rarer than gold. “Therefore,” recounts Pliny, “instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded.” This shiny new metal was aluminum, and that beheading marked its loss to the world for nearly two millennia. It next reappeared during the early 1800s but was still rare enough to be considered the most valuable metal in the world. Napoléon III himself threw a banquet for the king of Siam where the honored guests were given aluminum utensils, while the others had to make do with gold.”

GoldScarcityAluminumRelative ValuePlinyAbudanceTiberius
Book:Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
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“A Jesuit once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him about the relative value of communism, socialism and capitalism. Father Arrupe gave him a lovely reply. He said, "A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it." People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.”

PeopleHeartSaidUseValuesFatherCapitalismAskingNotesLovelySocialismSuperiorsGoldenCommunismRelativeJesuitRelative Value
Book:Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
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“Money is not a part of the visible sector of the economy; people do not consume money. Money is not a physical factor of production, but rather a yardstick for measuring economic input, economic outtake and the relative values of the real goods and services of the economic world. Money provides a method of measuring obligations, rights, powers and privileges. It provides a means whereby certain individuals can accumulate claims against others, or against the economy as a whole, or against many economies.”

PeopleWorldMeanRealWholeCertainValuesPoliticsIndividualEconomyRightsEconomicClaimsMethodPrivilegeProductionsObligationFactorsVisibleLiberalismGoodsRelativeInputMeasuringGoods And ServicesYardsticksRelative ValueFactors Of Production
Book:Two-factor Theory: the Economics of Reality; how to Turn Eighty Million Workers Into Capitalists on Borrowed Money, and Other Proposals
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“In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth's six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.”

HumansEndsEarthMotivationValuesAsksLossNumbersFictionTalentAdventureHugeSixCommitmentDirectScience FictionBillionsTinyIdeologyHuman LifeThe End Of The DayComparisonRelativeContinuingSurvivingParticipantsRoboticsSpace TravelDispassionateVicariousSpaceflightScience Fiction MovieRelative Value
Author:James Van Allen
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“People are, by and large, quite poor at judging correct absolute values but are astute about determining relative values. Psychologists call this coherent arbitrariness, which suggests that individuals are coherent when they compare prices on a relative basis but arbitrary when those prices are considered versus fundamental value.”

PeopleValuesIndividualPoorJudgingBasesAbsolutesFundamentalsCompareRelativeVersusArbitraryPsychologistAstuteRelative Value
Author:Michael Mauboussin
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“Above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-a-vis leisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays.”

IfsWantMayMeanLongDoeCountryFactsCertainValuesHoursLevelsQualityMaterialsHigherCitizensCostIncomeHolidayRelativeLeisureConsumptionEarningCompelledLong HoursLeisure TimeRelative Value
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“Scores do not reveal the most important facts about a wine. The written commentary (tasting notes) that accompanies the ratings is a better source of information than any score regarding the wine's style and personality, its quality level relative to its peers, and its relative value and aging potential.”

ImportantFactsValuesLevelsQualityWrittenStyleInformationSourcePersonalityWineAgingNotesScoreRelativePeersRatingCommentaryAccompanyTastingRelative Value
Author:Robert M. Parker, Jr.
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“Its [the anthropological method] power to make us understand the roots from which our civilization has sprung, that it impresses us with the relative value of all forms of culture, and thus serves as a check to an exaggerated valuation of the standpoint of our own period, which we are only too liable to consider the ultimate goal of human evolution, thus depriving ourselves of the benefits to be gained from the teachings of other cultures and hindering an objective criticism of our own work.”

HumansFormValuesCultureGoalTeachingEvolutionPeriodsCivilizationBenefitsRootsCriticismUltimateMethodChecksObjectivesRelativeImpressStandpointExaggeratedLiableUltimate GoalOther CulturesSprungHuman EvolutionValuationDeprivingRelative Value
Author:Franz Boas
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“Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.”

MenFeelsDoeIdeasCountryStatesGovernmentValuesWishDifferencesSimpleLibertyAcceptingOpinionSupportTruth IsDirectAbsolutesFellowsExcellenceConvictionWorthyProportionContemptRelativeFellow ManSimple TruthsDespotsRelative Value
Author:Alexis de Tocqueville
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