VALUE AND TRADE

Things that cost nothing are worth nothing.

A healthy body costs time and effort invested in exercise and food preparation. A strong mind costs the hours invested in reading and studying. Many costs do not require money to pay, but money gives a numerical value to everything on this planet for ease of exchange.

Money is the exchangeable currency of knowledge and effort.

The sole purpose of money is to give a numerical value to knowledge and effort for commercial purposes. A law student exchanges money with a school for the knowledge he needs for his career. The knowledge a lawyer has acquired from his professors is exchanged for money, which in turn can be exchanged for the knowledge and effort of others, even if they do not need the services of a lawyer.

Valuable things are never free, because if they were, they would be worthless.

If the Freemasonry Brotherhood do not need profit, why not just give unlimited money to anyone who asks? Why are the Testaments available for order when our organization can afford to provide copies to every citizen for free?
A house is worth more than a handful of sand because of the effort and materials that go into building it. Sand requires no knowledge, effort, or materials to build, so it has no value.
There is value in the words of the Testaments, but there is also value in the trees that must be cut down for the paper, in the workers who must create the designs and layouts and illustrations, in the ink for printing, in the packages for delivery. Hundreds of human minds with decades of experience go into every element of the production of the Testament – ​​while some minds simply sit on the sidelines, complaining about the costs of printing, designing, packaging, and delivering it to their door. While the Freemasonry Brotherhood don’t need profits, we also don’t need people who can’t see the value in things that aren’t free.

Money means nothing to those who print it.