Value and Worth

Amy and Becky want to start a restaurant.  Amy will be the chef, Becky will be the business manager. To get started, they ask their friends Caitlin and Dierdre to lend them some money. At first, the restaurant has no value. But after a year or two, it is doing well.  Whatever we call the overall value of the restaurant, each of the four women owns a percentage of that and is "worth" that amount of money. 

Let's not even talk about the part where the state wants to raise taxes on the business in some way.  Let's pretend the tax rate is zero. But Amy is frustrated with something about the deal.  She doesn't like working with Becky, or she thinks she can make more somewhere else. Something.  She wants to take her percentage of the value - which she does own - and cash out. If she does, there is a strong possibility that the other three cannot rescue things efficiently with another chef quickly enough and the restaurant goes under. The remaining "worth" of all of them is pennies on the dollar.

Or Dierdre has a crisis in her life and needs to take her investment money out. The other three attempt a lot of juggling, restructuring, and negotiating, but it's not enough and the business goes bankrupt. Again, now instead of having 25% of something valuable, everyone has 25% of scattered restaurant equipment. Any of the four might try again with another restaurant or business and succeed. Each might still have market value, but now they have little "worth" unless they become part of building something else.

If you try to smuggle in some idea of a different kind of worth, like the worth of the labor they put in, or whether they are worth something just because they are human, or their infinite worth in God's eyes you are changing the subject and being deceitful.

I just explained billionaires to you.