Life & Wisdom Quote by Ludwig Borne

In an era when markets were hardening into modern capitalism and public life was being reorganized around winners and losers, Borne points to the one form of wealth that refuses to behave like a commodity. Price wars can gut a rival, advertising can hijack attention, and scale can crush the small shop. Goodwill, though, can’t be discounted into irrelevance because it isn’t merely a feature of the product; it’s a relationship built on memory, trust, and a sense of mutual recognition. You can imitate someone’s goods. You can’t mass-produce the feeling that someone has treated you fairly.

Borne’s intent is pointedly political as much as economic. As a writer shaped by the ferment of post-Napoleonic Europe and the tightening strictures of Restoration-era public discourse, he’s suspicious of systems that reduce people to units of consumption or obedience. “Competition” here isn’t just business rivalry; it’s the broader logic of comparison and displacement that modernity accelerates. His claim smuggles in a moral rebuke: a society that prizes only what can be undercut will eventually undercut itself.

The subtext is strategic optimism. If the “one and only asset” is goodwill, then the powerless still have leverage: decency, credibility, solidarity. It’s also a warning to the powerful: domination can buy compliance, not affection. In today’s terms, goodwill is the moat that can’t be copied by features alone, and the reputational capital that evaporates the moment you treat people as disposable.