Debt

Attention exists as a form of indebtedness.

Or, to the extent it can exist as that it is that.

Or it becomes that.

For instance, this writing is ‘free’ in that I pay no one to host it and no one pays me to write it. 

It makes it nugatory.  How can it have any value, being free - ?

Supposing that the following conditions obtained:

i) that this were part of a course 

ii) that a charge were to be levied for services rendered

It would then be conceived as a form of debt: you would pay attention to it; you would owe it something - simply by the fact of having paid money for it and its being institutionally or formally conceived (which is to say conceived in terms that entail specific parcels of time).  As it is, since it is free, since you pay it nothing, you pay it no attention; you owe it nothing.

Or at best it is a kind of black market writing.  Surreptitious; clandestine, furtive.  Time borrowed; or time stolen.

Tags: Attention, Money