Woody Cavenaugh

"One man's trash is another man's treasure." Nothing proves that old adage like eBay. A place like that can be used to judge something worth. This week widget "X" is only selling for "Y" dollars. Last month it sold for "Y" + 10%. People are making pretty decent money understanding and reacting to the market's ups and downs.

People have a worth. An employee who has great worth and 20 years experience could lose all value overnight if their specialty is abandoned for the new hotness. Suddenly that person is fired and replaced by two people who have knowledge of the new hotness and have little or no experience because the new hotness is that new. Sometimes the person with 20 years experience can recoup some level of worth by being flexible enough to be retrained on the new hotness. Meanwhile a baby has infinite worth because it has infinite potential for worth. Not only are mom and dad assigning worth to the pooping machine for being a miracle of life and a genetic successor, the baby could be literally anything. Babies are the human equivalent of the stem cell.

But what does the baby think its worth? What does the employee with 20 years experience at something that has no value see of their own value? Does their value change with the market? A rotting log in the woods is home and food for insects, spores, mold and fungus who all value it as a habitat, but how does the log measure its own worth?

Donald Trump has worth, Forbes measures it every year (Congratulations). Presumably the homeless guy on the corner has worth. How do you measure the homeless guy's worth? How does he measure it? Does he value his worth to be the same as Trump's? Is it a mistake or not for him to think this?

How do I measure my own worth? Does "worth" exist in a vacuum? Sorry, I have already foreseen some of you working up smart ass remarks about Hubble and the International Space Station. It won't wash. You don't get off that easy.

How do you measure worth?