The best way to destroy the last vestige of intellectual freedom is to assume that it doesn't matter, or that the problems it solves are unimportant because they aren't commercial. The truth is that the best part of intellectual work is never commercial.

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Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast: Alvin Roth on the Economics of Morally Contested Markets

Economic markets are efficient ways of deciding fair prices, at least in ideal circumstances of perfect competition, information, and choice. But there is more to life than fair prices.

The goal of a business is to make money. The goal of a life is to avoid regret. These are often in conflict, and the resolution of that conflict is what separates a life well-lived from a merely profitable one.

Every external fact to which you are indifferent is irrelevant to you, save in so far as it may be a sign of fact to which you are not indifferent. Only the facts to which you react emotionally have any intrinsic interest for you either of the practical or the theoretic sort.

The best thing a human can do is to help another human being know more. It's even better than making money.