Saturday, August 30, 2008

Unexpected economics

Market forces in Gailileo's "Dialogue":

The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them. What greater stupidity can be imagined than that of calling jewels, silver, and gold "precious," and earth and soil "base"? People who do this ought to remember that if there were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels or precious metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just to have enough earth to plant a jasmine in a little pot, or to sow an orange seed and watch it sprout, grow, and produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and fine fruit. It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless; they call a diamond very beautiful because it is like pure water, and then would not exchange one for ten barrels of water.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, diamond is scarce! But the th point is diamond is scarce because we do believe that the others wants diamonds as much as we do.Think people can always survive without any diamond. What would be the price of diamond in a one-man economy? The value of diamond simply shows the stupidness of human being.

Green Alia said...

This was greaat to read