15 June

I suggest Tarde as a guide in these ‘economic’ times. The economy you have is nothing more than the social conversation you have. They’re not 2 things. An unequal society is a society not having conversations, it really is that simple. Find any public issue, and if it’s a problem, it’s because there isn’t a conversation happening there. “There is no economic relationship between men that is not first accompanied by an exchange of words, whether verbal, written, printed, telegraphed, or telephoned...how do these needs for production and consumption...arise? Most often, thanks again to conversations, which has spread the idea of a new product to buy or to produce from one interlocutor to another...If, just for one week, conversation ceased in Paris, it would show very quickly through the singular decrease in the number of sales in stores...There is no...factor more powerful...in production than the chatter of individuals in their idle hours."