“If you have a loaf of bread and I have a euro, and I use my euro to buy your bread, at the end of the exchange I will have the bread and you will have the euro. Seems like a perfect balance, right? A has a euro, B has a bread, then A has the bread and B has the euro. It is a fair transaction, but merely material.
Now, imagine you have a Verlaine sonnet or know the Pythagorean theorem, and I have nothing. If you teach me, at the end of this exchange, I will have learned the sonnet and the theorem, but you will still have them too. In this case, there is not only balance, but growth.
First we had a business, the second we shared knowledge. And as goods are consumed, culture expands infinitely.”
Michel Serres, French philosopher
09/1/1930 – 06/1/2019
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