Captain Mac Snow wrote:No matter how many times you put a monkey to choose between a diamond and a banana, the monkey will always choose the banana. The monkey cannot understand the importance of a diamond. She is a monkey.
The monkey makes the right choice for itself. A diamond has no value or use to the monkey, it can't eat it, can't trade it with humans or other monkeys, maybe could use it as a tool, but would be very rare and situational. While the banana is food, necessary for survival. It's like offering a wad of 100 dollar bills or a banana to a monkey. What's the monkey gonna do with those bills? Those are things that only have importance for trade, and little else.
Likewise, what if you were starving to death in the middle of nowhere, and I offer you a diamond or a banana? are you going to choose the diamond and HOPE, you make it back to civilization to trade it, or choose the banana for food?
What might be super valuable to one group, person, or species might be totally worthless to another. Likewise, time and place also effects an items worth. Did you know there's a planet out there that's basically just one giant diamond? if we lived on that planet, do you think the diamond would have any value when it's as common as dirt is here? A diamond only has worth and value because we as humans give it value based on how rare it is to find them on earth. It is useful for a drill bit though, and maybe a few other uses for it's hardness, but you overrate it's importance. It's just a shiny rock that's really hard.