Attention exceeds any measurable property, so exchanging it for money always entails loss.

Evidence

This call insists that our attention will always be greater than whichever of its properties we can measure. What this means, therefore, is that to exchange our attention “like” money or “for” money will always be attended by loss. Because this thing we call attention is vaster, deeper, and far harder to plot on a balance sheet than the metrics of “time on device” (TOD) that the human frackers leverage. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 248

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down why attention cannot be priced: its defining trait is exceeding whatever metric (TOD) is applied to it.
• XREF: connects to: Attention is a currency that is always being spent and cannot be saved — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 63