Throughout most of human history, literacy remained very low throughout the world. Knowledge was mostly passed orally, and a key reason for this was that reproducing writing was very expensive. It was not worth the average person’s time to learn how to read if he or she rarely encountered and could never afford written material. Time is the only scarce resource that we all consume equally—no matter who you are, you only get twenty-four hours in a day. When people are deciding how to spend their time, it’s only rational to think of what benefits they’ll get from a potential choice. Learning to
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