Suppose one boy is not willing to trade his Willie Mays baseball card for less than one dollar. We can say he values that card at one dollar. Also suppose this boy loves bubble gum and would part with $1.50 for a hundred pieces. Another boy migth pay $1.50 for a Willie Mays baseball card, but would care little for the hundred pieces of bubble gum. He would give up his gum for a dollar. These boys meet and trade their goods. Before the transaction, there was two dollars’ worth of value in teh two boys’ possessions. After the trade, there was three dollars’ worth of value - each, in a sense, profited fifty cents in value from the trade.

That’s a fun, enlightening excerpt from RC Sproul Jr’s book, Biblical Economics. I’m enjoying the book, and learning from it. It seems to be the basics, but that is just what I need.

Also, the first three chapters read less like an book about economics, and more like a theology book. Which is a nice touch… setting things in order, establishing the foundations.