Whoever takes up and seriously pursues a matter that does not lead to material advantage, ought not to count on the sympathy of his contemporaries.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Despite the greed, grubbiness, and graft associated with capitalism, looked at in a certain light it can appear positively utopian. Certainly many economists and centrist politicians have thought so. In a free market there is no such thing as inherent value. No authority, not even divinely ordained, can determine that something is worth paying for. The only true test of worth is whether people want it, and how much they are willing to spend to get it. That’s it. You can even argue that truly pure capitalism—with perfectly free consumers in a perfectly open market—is a kind of existentialist paradise, where every person determines their values through their own decisions (specifically, by deciding what to buy).

Of course, as any behavioral psychologist, marxist, anthropologist, or clear-eyed person will tell you, this paradise of free choice is very far from the reality we live in. Nevertheless, I think that many of us internalize the idea that value is determined via the market—not only personally (as the existentialists might have it), but objectively. If a song is #1 in the charts, for example, then it must be good by definition. Anything people choose to spend money on simply must be better than what they choose to ignore. By extension, any activity that does not make a profit is, objectively, a waste of time. Money is the ultimate arbiter.

Now, I am not against making money. But I am opposed to the idea that an activity must bring a profit in order to be worth seriously pursuing. A good hobby should, above all, bring pleasure to oneself. Money is a bonus. 

In many ways the internet has ushered in a golden age of hobbies, by allowing networks to form among practitioners across vast distances and making available resources that previous generations could scarcely dream of. Birdwatching, for example, used to be done in solitude or, at most, in a local group, with only a guidebook as a resource. Now apps can identify birds by photo or call, or notify users of a certain species in an area, pooling the collected knowledge of the entire community. 

But the internet has also made it possible to monetize these hobbies—or try to. Whether taking photos, making paintings, or recording music, now we can all be miniature professionals by selling our work or services on the web. (Birders have mostly kept out of the market, though.) And when these ventures perform poorly—as most inevitably will—a tinge of disappointment and failure hangs over what, in another time, might have been a perfectly carefree pursuit. In other words, we now have the ability to turn virtually any skill we have into another job—which is not exactly a recipe for joy. 

Of course, Schopenhauer was not talking about hobbies. With a good deal of self-pity, he was referring to his own largely unrewarded and unrecognized labor to create a new system of philosophy. That bitter man was certainly not the only genius whose work was ignored by his contemporaries. There are too many to name. In retrospect, it is a wonder that people can be so blind. And yet, the idea that posterity is the ultimate judge—which Schopenhauer would likely agree with, I think—is just another version of the idea that markets are the ultimate judge of value. In this case, you can just say that the market is a little bit slow.

But, as I mentioned in my review of Van Gogh’s letters, this introduces a kind of paradox. For if the market is the arbiter of value, and that market can be tardy in coming to a verdict, then we must labor under the uncertainty of our own worthiness. We can spend our lives painting and leave behind a treasure for the ages, or we can spend our lives painting and leave behind junk nobody wants. Since we might die before our work is “discovered,” we might never know. Herman Melville, for example, could probably never have dreamed that Moby Dick—which sold poorly and got mediocre reviews—would become the Great American Novel. 

Are there any lessons to be drawn from this? Maybe the very idea that markets—including posthumous markets—determine value ought to be scrapped. After all, there is very little stability or unanimity in mass opinion. For all we know, in 100 years Van Gogh might not even be popular or beloved anymore. Schopenhauer’s reputation has certainly had its highs and lows.