Let's suppose You were stranded on a desert island. With no other individuals with whom to exchange , certain facts of life would be much clearer to you. 

You would know,for example that you'll only be able to consume what you first produce. And you'd know that your resources are limited. There is only so much you can do with your limited time,energy and knowledge- so You must choose.

 You may eventually go swimming; but only after you are sure that it will not 
be at the expense of having food and shelter. 
 You develop a routine for yourself ~ which includes your daily activity and 
your plans for the future. We call this routine your profit motive ~ the method by 
which you intend to obtain your happiness. 
 And you know that if some new activity occurs to you, you can only add it to 
your routine by giving up something else (even if that something else is leisure). So 
anything new must be of greater value than something you’re already doing; for you 
will only change your routine in order to get something of greater value to you. 
That’s the concept of profit at work again. 
 You are continually choosing ~ making value judgments ~ choosing between 
the alternatives available to you. And, of course, the object is always to make your 
life as happy as possible ~ to satisfy your own values. 
 Now let’s suppose that there is another person on the island with you. Each of 
you has his own property and each of you is producing for yourself what you want to 
consume. 
 But pretty soon you find you are a better producer of some things and he is a 
better producer of other things. And, because of your differing values, you can make 
exchanges between you that will improve the position of each of you. You come to 
the point where you say, “I’ll give you this in exchange for that.” And what you’re 
offering is the price you’re willing to pay to get what you want. 
 So you make exchanges of some of your surpluses. But you will still choose in 
each exchange. You will not automatically give up what you have produced simply 
because he wants to trade. You will evaluate what he offers in terms of what you will 
have to give up in order to get it. 
 In the process, then, each of you will decide to spend time producing items that 
the other person values highly. You won’t spend time producing items for exchange 
that the other person doesn’t value much ~ because you would get very little in 
exchange for your efforts, no matter how long it took you to produce the products 
involved. 
 And in this isolated situation we can see an important point: It is not how long 
you work at some task that determines what you’ll receive for it in exchange. It is the 
value someone else places upon the product or service that determines what it is worth 
in exchange.

Anthony

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