Attention

The finite human resource every message competes for. Rented dearly, held briefly, and repaid only by being worth it.

Attention is the market beneath every other market: before persuasion, before preference, someone must simply look, and looking has a cost the looker pays. The modern surplus of messages did not create more attention; it only industrialised the competition for the same fixed supply.

Treating it as borrowed changes conduct: interruptions must repay, work must reward the stay, and wasting a viewer's seconds is spending their goodwill. The feed's first-second discipline, the film's refusal to pad, the page's single focal point are all the same ethic, we take attention seriously because it is the audience's money.