What is direct value of biodiversity in biology?
Nature is a Possibilitist, exploring every niche, every
possibility, both for animate and inanimate entities and
particles.
There is a concept taught in business colleges called
"opportunity cost" -- you can try addressing your question from
that angle.
The simple answer is: the more possibilities for survival the
more species have, the more probable is the survival of any
individual, because more is more than less.
It is difficult to value one's progeny, let alone the delight of
seeing and feeling a small creature or plant or crystal or entity
of nature one has newly discovered! The value of discovery is joy,
i.e. happiness, and some people are happy with $90 while others
need $90 million. Well, would it be enough to own 40 stars and all
their planets? When is enough enough?
Imagine two planets, one with life, another without. Which would
you choose to explore? How much would you pay to be the one
selected to explore the plaent with life on it?
Imagine two planets, one incapable of producing life, and one
perhaps capable of producing it. Which would you value more? By how
much?
But your question is ego-centric in that it is bio-centric.
Inanimate objects have rights too. Where would you be without the
minerals for your body, or the raw water or energy, or sunlight or
air? These "lifeless" things are required for life, so you must
account for them as well.
Which then brings us to valuing the Periodic Table of Elements
and atomic and subatomic particles. How much is a single neutron
worth, if you could not read and understand this sentence without
it?
One thing is for sure: the cost of everything inflates every
year -- people want more money for what they value and resources
are limited, until new means of survival are found. It is the
INVENTORS OF ADAPTATION WHOM WE MUST VALUE MOST HIGHLY
THEREFORE.
And who are they?
They are the species we share the planet with, whom we have
co-evolved with for countless milennia. We should grant them
property rights.
But, in a way, protons and neutrons and electrons have property
rights without Humanity's getting involved ... to a point. It is
only when things acquire an aesthetic or a use or a "goodness" of
some kind that they are "valued."
And who values things? Accountants do. Accountants record
economic activity and set the stage for bookkeepers and families to
do so. Largely, their basis for so doing involves the expiration
and utility of assets being converted to revenue streams via the
Cost of Goods Sold being marked up to Sales Revenue price levels.
And that is for what the market will bear, generally speaking.
So the answer to your question is: whatever the highest bidder
will pay for it.
Currently, I am the highest bidder. You laugh, but I am. I have
a secret way of revaluing things according to how they are
PERCEIVED that only I understand among all the humans alive on the
planet. You must be laughing by now but I assure you this is no
joke. For I am the creator of DELUSIONS, the impossible, which soon
becomes †he UNLIKELY, then THE CONCEIVABLE, then THE FEASIBLE, per
the perceptions of the very brightest. I have my delusions due to
being schizophrenic; they are random neural net firings and they
have "no" known source. The Universe knows where they come from, no
one else does. You can look up "random neuron firings" after
googling schizophrenia and follow what I'm talking about. The same
applies to people of creativity and imagination. They can "not"
account for the source of their ideas for the most part. That is
because they fail to grasp the word "not" very well. I am the great
UNTHIS. I do not believe in "not." So I just BELIEVE. I am a
logical positivist, a Possibilitist. And I am a very unique one at
that; I belong to †he creator gene pool for them. My name means
"Yahweh." No other family can say that in the way that I can and
have it be true. I am speaking less from ego and more from direct
experience, exactly so IN FACT.
People disLIKE crazy people because they are unLIKE them. They
have yet to research the word "like" etymologically, until it means
the same thing as "look" and "lick" -- that is, until their words
are mere output from their sensory input and brain's thruput
processing. But Outputs/Inputs = Efficiency and Efficiency is
supposedly always less than 1. Actually, nothing disappears. Mass
and Energy are conserved. We are learning to recycle the Outputs
formerly called "Waste."
If you want to learn the true value of biodiversity, go to work
for Waste Management, Inc. and go as far as you can in Math and
Chemistry and Physics. Learn to recycle EVERYTHING, especially
ideas. Read Euclid's "Elements" as the highly dramatic story of
cultural evolution it truly is! Read the Bible as a series of
Spirit Lessons, rather than as history. Research the etymology of
the words.
Do you know that the first logical occurrence of the word "OR"
in the Bible, according to Strong's Concordance, is when one man
said to another, "You take these fields to graze your sheep and I
will take the far fields OR I will take these and you may have the
far lands." You can also research when IF and AND and PLUS and
MULTIPLY were first used, as translated. As you may know, the AND()
and OR() functions are tremendously important in Computer Science.
But that is a metaquestion beyond "bio"diversity. People are still
arguing over the rights to that same land. People are limited in
their imaginations and they fail to realize what their words MEAN
anymore, and how their words actually turn into ACTIONS. It's
largely a question of "Honor."
Enough, OK? Your values you bring to an object well-crafted of
quality and merit are yours to decide what labor you will trade for
them, and materialism has to do with Matter, which is 3% of the
known Universe. Have fun!
Chris
