Use and Value Diversity

Variety is the spice of life. Imagine living in a monocultural society. A society were everyone wore the same uniform, drove the same car, worked the same hours and were taught the same lessons. Sounds boring eh? How long do you think it would take for a system like that to fail? Until somebody decided to wear a different shirt or paint their car a different colour? Now the people in charge would obviously want to suppress this individual in fear of him or her infecting others with this idea of diverting from the status quo. The problem for them is the change has already begun and the natural right to freedom is a force more powerful than they can defend. So they make a law against diversity.
Use and Value Diversity
That proposal doesn't sound fun at all! The things is this is exactly how modern agriculture works. The status quo will plant one strain of plant x. No other plants are allowed. Any plants that are shaped weird or slightly blemished are destroyed. When a few "weeds" show up they spray toxins to kill off the intruders. 
Then they pass a law that says everyone has to do it the same way.
Simply put I think their way sucks. When you put all your eggs in one basket you are asking for trouble. All it takes is one aggressive intruder and your whole system comes crashing to the ground. So we do things like companion planting, high intensity rotational grazing, agro forestry and unconventional building schemes. We push the boundaries of innovation. We stack functions. We fail better. If we get a 10% success rate that's ok. We would rather get a 10% yield on 12 different crops than a 10% yield on one. When we use diversity we automatically increase value. We create more robust varieties and more resilient design systems. When you walk around my yard you will notice something different. My lawn is mostly not grass. And the grasses that are there are different shades of green. Some are short and dark, others long and light. Weeds everywhere. If you watch me work in the yard you will often see me stop, crouch down and pick a few leaves then proceed to carry on, munching happily away on a quick snack. I have a great assortment of edible plants growing wild all over the property. Lance leaf plantain, dandelion, lambs quarters, pepper grass, dock, sorrel, chickweed and clover. Quite the salad bar indeed. Many of these plants are medicinal as well, extending their value far beyond a nutritional source, indeed the pharmacy is but a few steps out my front door. Possibly the best part is they are all either perenials or self seeding, so I have zero time invested in the propagation of theses plants, they are pest and disease tolerant and require no fertilizers. It's a huge bonus!
You can take this principle to the bank. Literally. When you invest or save money for your future you want it to grow. You also want it to be secure, but as with most systems, growth will not come without some risk attached to it. So you diversify. Instead of investing all of your money in stocks for instance, you invest small amounts of money in multiple areas. You split it up into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, precious metals (pysical not paper, if you don't hold it you don't own it) and a TFSA. This way if one or two of your investments take a hit you will not completely lose your shirt. The likelihood of a total collapse of the system is low. Even if fiat currency stopped tomorrow, you would still have that silver and gold stash to use as trade if needed. Precious metals have always held some value. It is the ultimate hedge against inflation or the devaluation of paper money.
As you can see diversity is a crucial tool in our kit. Use it and value it.