TIME - the basic asset of life

As an "applied mathematician", which is how my household earns its bread in the division of labor in the economic system that governs our community and nation, I find much of my work devoted to looking for solutions to "optimization under constraints" problems. Such problems come in many disguises:

The market rate for this product is P. Can we arrange our resources to offer this product at a price equal to or less than P?

We have accumulated a database of experience that includes records of transactions with data elements deemed important by our risk analysts. Given this experience and appropriate assumptions about the continuity of past experience and probable conditions in the future, what cost and revenues should we expect to flow for future transactions of similar type?

Given our marketplace, and identified customer needs, can we create a product that meets the listed needs in such a way as to meet certain customer needs at a price that many customers will delighted to pay, and that our shareholders will be delighted to finance?

All of these questions emerge from an enterprise which receives resources from hopeful shareholders in the enterprise, employs workers to convert these resources into means of supplying goods and services to the marketplace, and aims to generate an enduring relationship with customers in that marketplace which is satisfying to them and to the hopes of the shareholders who commit their resources, and the workers who invest their lives in maintaining and managing the processes which accomplish this.

All of the actors in this drama bring their various talents, desires, visions, appetites, and energy to the "show" with one major constraint that none can avoid: the constraint on their time. Time is the vital ingredient in all of our activities "under heaven". It flows without interruption, and cannot be accumulated for "later use": it must be invested as it becomes available, or lost forever. Most importantly, the franchise of each mortal being is given only a finite amount of time within which to accomplish (or set into motion) all of the productive life output for which the franchise was granted.