"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand"
About this Quote
Truth gets treated like a luxury item, but Billings flips the economics: it is scarce in the abstract, sure, yet still more plentiful than our appetite for it. The joke lands because it targets not the availability of truth but the market for it. In other words, the shortage is moral, not material. People complain about being lied to while quietly subscribing to the lies that flatter them, soothe them, or keep them from having to change.
Billings wrote in 19th-century America, a culture already marinating in partisan newspapers, traveling hucksters, and the kind of boosterish certainty that made fraud feel like ambition. His persona as a misspelling, homespun “philosopher” is part of the trick: he sounds like plain common sense while delivering a bleak diagnosis. By framing honesty as “supply” and “demand,” he smuggles an accusation into a familiar business metaphor. If truth is in “excess,” then ignorance isn’t just accidental; it’s consumer preference.
The subtext is especially cutting because it implicates everyone. The problem isn’t only liars; it’s the audience that rewards them. Billings is pointing at the human habit of treating facts as optional accessories to whatever story we already want to live inside. That’s why the line still reads like a dispatch from today’s feeds: we don’t merely endure misinformation; we subsidize it with attention, outrage, and the comfort of being told we’re right.
Billings wrote in 19th-century America, a culture already marinating in partisan newspapers, traveling hucksters, and the kind of boosterish certainty that made fraud feel like ambition. His persona as a misspelling, homespun “philosopher” is part of the trick: he sounds like plain common sense while delivering a bleak diagnosis. By framing honesty as “supply” and “demand,” he smuggles an accusation into a familiar business metaphor. If truth is in “excess,” then ignorance isn’t just accidental; it’s consumer preference.
The subtext is especially cutting because it implicates everyone. The problem isn’t only liars; it’s the audience that rewards them. Billings is pointing at the human habit of treating facts as optional accessories to whatever story we already want to live inside. That’s why the line still reads like a dispatch from today’s feeds: we don’t merely endure misinformation; we subsidize it with attention, outrage, and the comfort of being told we’re right.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|
More Quotes by Josh
Add to List
