Knowledge Wants To Be Expensive

It Takes Hard Work To Make Knowledge

Rauch here is referencing the famous quote, “Information wants to be free.” His distinction between “information” and “knowledge” is important here. Information is ideas which we may not know to be true. Rumors are information. Lies are information. But knowledge—knowledge, for Rauch, is information that has been tested systematically, and because of this, we have higher confidence that it may well be true. Because of that systematic testing of knowledge, knowledge is inherently expensive. It requires work to produce. Whereas information, like this Substack, can easily be pulled out of someone’s butt pretty easily without much effort. :)