number of vulgar, tasteless and stupid people so that it shall grow continually more difficult for bad work to get a good price.
After all, however we may beat about the bush, the value of anything that has to be exchanged or sold is, and must be, nothing but what we can get for it, whether the thing be our own work or some article that we have otherwise acquired. Economists have obscured the question of value by distinguishing between Value in Use and Value in Exchange, and otherwise surrounding it with subtleties that the ordinary man cannot, and does not want to, understand. The value of anything that I have to sell is what I can get for it, and the value of anything that I want is the amount of my work, or of goods that I possess, or of money that I will give and the owner of it will accept. When expressed in money, value becomes price.
Many things, such as friendship, are most precious possessions but have no value in an economic sense because they cannot be bought and sold, and would lose their real worth if they could. From the confusion that this fact produces the notion arises that there can be such a thing as "inherent" value in an article apart from anybody's desire for it, and thence
