Value begins in the human mind.

Comment “Menger” and we’ll send you an article that explores this further. Carl Menger and the Austrian economists helped transform economics by showing that goods do not carry value as an objective property stamped into them by labor, cost, or material substance. A bottle of water, a diamond, a book, or a tool becomes valuable because someone, facing real needs and limited means, judges it useful for a particular purpose. Markets are built on millions of subjective valuations. Buyers and sellers exchange because they rank goods differently. Prices emerge from those encounters, condensing dispersed judgments about usefulness, scarcity, urgency, and alternatives. The seller gives up something he values less than what he receives. The buyer does the same. No central planner needs to decide what things “should” be worth. A free market lets people reveal value through choice.