The Best Things Money Can't Buy — What Markets Cannot Price, and Why That's the Point
The cliché says the best things in life are free. That’s not quite right, and the imprecision matters. Trust, respect, a friend’s attention, a stranger’s blood freely given — none of these are free in the sense of costing nothing to produce; they cost reputation, time, restraint, years of behaving well when no one was checking. What they share is something sharper than “free”: they are goods whose value depends on their not being for sale. Attach a price, and the thing on the other side of the transaction stops being the thing you wanted. …