The Market For Ideas

I like the way ancient Greek philosophers
described the market places they walked through
-as places where they would exchange ideas
at least much as buy the food stuffs they lived on.

I much prefer that notion over 'the market'
as conceived 2000 years later by Adam Smith,
where money is the only means of exchange
and the only idea is the value of goods,
relative to each other as mediated by money.

Smith's market is a place where people and ideas
are worth what people will pay for them,
before they are left to rot, and lose all value.