Money over minds

The pearl
 Juan Tomas nodded gravely. He was the elder, and Kino looked to him for wisdom. "it is hard to know," he said. "We do know that we are cheated from birth to the overcharge on our coffins. But we survive. You have defied not the pearl buyers, but the whole structure, the whole way of life, and I am afraid for you."
  It is important to the story because it talks about how everything is so over priced anymore. That we get cheated out of money because these items are not worth the amount you pay. But people still buy these items, because other people have or desire the item. 
   A real life example would be clothes, as everyone buys expensice clothes, that the producer of that product made for less that 5$, just to resell it for 50$. They do this because that is what is in stye.
 Money and valuable things take over the minds of humans. It will drive them to do crucial  things.
 Our elders are wiser than society today. They were alive at times that money wasn't as valuable. 
 Even when we die, our family has to pay for overcharged funeral funds and pay for the coffins. We have to pay when we come into this world, a hospital fee. Nothing is free anymore.