Wealth & Money Quote by Ted Nelson

Nelson’s line lands like a shrug aimed at the entire publishing-industrial complex: scarcity isn’t a law of nature, it’s an invoice. The most pointed move here is how he frames “space” not as an artistic boundary but as a bureaucratic artifact. Ideas “keep going,” material exists in excess, and then comes the blunt violence of editing: you cut, not because the thought is finished, but because the container is.

That’s classic Ted Nelson, the hypertext evangelist who spent a career arguing that linear documents are a technological compromise masquerading as intellectual discipline. The subtext is a quiet accusation. We like to romanticize concision as virtue, but Nelson is reminding you that a lot of what we call “good writing” has been trained by the economics of paper, page counts, ad ratios, and production schedules. Even “whatever” is doing work: a dismissive wave at the long list of invisible constraints that end up shaping what the public gets to know.

There’s also a creative tension humming underneath: abundance versus legibility. Nelson isn’t saying editing is pointless; he’s saying the motives for editing are often misrecognized. When the medium is expensive, the editor becomes a customs officer. When the medium is fluid (links, layers, versioning), the role can shift toward mapping, context, and optional depth. The quote reads like a small manifesto for a world where ideas don’t have to pretend they fit on a page.