Why be honorable? It’s the best way to be valuable

Value is not a property that objects or people carry around in the world. Outside narrow financial models, it is attributed by people. Honor is the discipline that makes that attribution durable, because it builds trust. Trust is the precondition to being valued. If you want to become valuable, start by being honorable.

Intrinsic versus attributed value

In finance, the term intrinsic value has a specific, technical role. Analysts sometimes use it a priori—as a modeling floor or minimum—within a defined risk and trading context. It can be useful there. A discounted cash flow model needs an anchor; an options desk needs a lower bound. Inside that frame, intrinsic is a shorthand for assumptions you are willing to stand on.

Step outside that frame and the label begins to blur. What a model calls intrinsic still depends on human inputs: which cash flows count, which discount rate applies, which scenarios matter. The number is not a property of the asset alone. It is a claim about the future, filtered through judgment. That is not a flaw; it is a reminder. Value statements are always connected to people and their expectations.

Value as a verb

In the broader world, things are valuable because people value them. Value is a verb before it becomes a noun. It aggregates through choices and expectations—purchases and prices, but also referrals, endorsements, and the willingness to take risk together. Markets formalize some of this aggregation. Relationships and institutions handle the rest.

This is why the same object can carry different value in different settings. The number in one context is not transferable without the people who gave rise to it. Reputation, norms, and institutional memory act like reservoirs. They store the record of how people have valued a person, product, or firm over time, and they influence the next decision. Your actions fill or drain that reservoir.

When you treat value as a verb, you also see why “capturing” value without contributing to it does not last. People update their assessments. They revise, reprice, and reallocate attention. Short-term extraction often shows up later as higher friction and lower opportunity flow. The bill arrives through lost trust.

The desert island test

Consider the thought experiment: all the gold in the world on a deserted island. Without people—without counterparties—there is no price, no exchange, and no one who cares about ownership claims. The so‑called intrinsic story collapses in the absence of human valuers. Gold still has physical properties, but it lacks value in the sense that drives action.

This test is not about gold. It is a way to check claims that bypass human judgment. If a thing’s “value” survives only inside a model, but evaporates when you remove the people who would recognize it, what you have is a model artifact. In the world where decisions get made, value requires view. Someone must look and say, “I will give something for that,” or, “I will stand with that.”

What people seek

People want meaning. Many also want to be valued. The reliable route to that outcome is to become valuable to others. You do that by making it easier for them to reach their goals with you than without you. In a business setting, that can mean clarity, reliability, and restraint—qualities that reduce noise and risk for the counterparties who must decide whether to engage.

There are many traits that can make a person valued: kindness, generosity, humor, friendliness. They matter. They open doors and make work humane. But they all sit on a foundation. If the foundation is weak, the structure does not hold when pressure comes.

Trustworthiness is number 0

The foundation is trustworthiness. Call it number 0—the thing beneath the list that makes the rest count. Without it, other strengths are discounted. With it, ordinary strengths become dependable advantages.

Trustworthiness builds slowly and crumbles quickly. It rests on honoring your word over time, especially under constraint. It shows up as predictability. It is the refusal to exploit short‑term advantages that would erode another’s confidence in the relationship. You can be competent and charming, but if you take the edge when the other side is exposed, they will price that risk into every future interaction—or exit.

Honor is the practice of alignment between word and deed. Be slow to promise and fast to deliver. The point is not theatrics; it is repeatability under pressure. When people observe that your statements map to outcomes, they begin to rely on you. Reliance reduces the need for hedges and surveillance. That is the practical heart of trust.

Trust also compounds. Each kept commitment lowers the perceived variance of future outcomes with you. Counterparties then widen the set of things they are willing to do together. They share information earlier. They accept simpler contracts. They extend better terms. In effect, your cost of capital—whether measured in money, attention, or time—falls. The opposite happens when trust is damaged. Oversight increases. Options narrow. Cost rises.

Honor does not mean never seeking advantage. It means taking the gains that do not require you to sacrifice credibility. There is a line between being sharp and being slippery. Cross it, and people will recalibrate. The short pop fades; the spread you earned on the trade is dwarfed by the deals you do not see next quarter because your name now carries a footnote.

Bottom line

Honor creates trust. Trust lowers friction and risk, increases opportunity flow, and compounds reputation. Because value is attributed by people, trust is the precondition to being valued. That is why being honorable is the best way to be valuable.