What's it worth?

'In a market, prices are determined by demand and supply and not by intrinsic worth of commodities. So air, which is vital for life, without which we will perish in minutes, is free, but gold is precious. A teacher commands a price of few thousand, whose role in character and nation building is immense, but an actor a few crores. Price assigns an artificial sense of ‘worth’ or ‘value’ to a commodity that confuses our discriminatory faculty and obfuscates the truth. In the words of Mexican poet Octavio Paz, “Market reduces ideas, feelings, art, love, friendship and people themselves to consumer products. Everything becomes a thing to be bought, used and then thrown in the rubbish dump.” '

- Shashi Ranjan Kumar; 'That invisible hand of God'.