Michael McMaster writes :
>I suggest a powerful point of view is that there is a marketplace of
>ideas and that they are competing for you time, attention, money and
>other resources. In this marketplace, the competition is much more
>between ideas than people.
This is only a metaphor and not a very useful one. There is a market for
books, there is no market for ideas. You cannot buy nor sell an idea. Look
at what we do here : we buy telecoms, computers, modems, but we exchange
ideas. You give me yours, I give you mine. I can "take" your idea and
express it to someone else. You wont get paid for it. And nobody will.
There is no copyright, no patent for ideas. Take any idea, "cogito ergo
sum", for instance. Once you understood it, it's yours. You can give
Descartes credit for it (you should), but you can use it the way you wish.
In that sense knowledge is free (if knowledge is made, among other things,
of ideas). There is no market for ideas and for knowledge because they are
not rare.
As for what the students "buy" : I hope they don't buy diplomas (they
could, but it's usually considered unfair). They don't buy knowledge. They
just buy the right to listen to the teachers, have them correct their
works, use the library, take exams. As said someone else on this thread,
they buy opportunities. They don't buy the results, they buy the means to
attain these results.
-- Bernard Girard <bgirard@Dialup.FranceNet.fr>