Creating value vs. Capturing value
From a dialog with ChatGPT. I think there is something quite coherent underneath our discomfort, and it is more interesting than simply “capitalism bad” or “business professors like money.” What you are noticing is a mismatch between the moral logic of education and the moral logic of conventional entrepreneurship . Universities routinely operate on a premise something like this: If I make you more capable, knowledgeable, thoughtful, ethical, creative, and humane, I do not need to capture the return personally for my work to have been worthwhile. That is an extraordinary proposition. I teach you. You become better at solving problems. You go somewhere else and solve them. Perhaps I never meet the people you help. Perhaps my university never receives a cent. That diffusion is the point. Knowledge creates positive externalities, and education traditionally celebrates those externalities. Then, oddly, we walk across the hallway into the business school and often reverse the moral polarit...
