[1MoreThing]

Why shouldn't the creation of knowledge and expertise come with a price tag? The question is "is it cheaper to create a system that creates new expertise than it is to hire someone with that expertise?" As long as the cost of the system is less than the cost of the generated expertise on the open market, it's a worthwhile investment.

[benrbray]

Sure, we could assign price tags to every human interaction and never stop. But isn't it better for everyone to build a collective wiki of knowledge that we can all share and rely on? If I spend an entire day digging through the webpack documentation to perform a certain task, I'll gladly share that knowledge freely with anyone who asks, because I think it's a complete waste of human existence for each of us individually to learn how to wrangle webpack into submission.

The question becomes: If I've already put in the work, what cost is there to me to make my knowledge freely available in the form of a SO answer? Usually the answer is "not much".

(I'll be sending you an invoice for this comment)