Money talks, talk is cheap, and ideas are exchanged in marketplaces as part of the knowledge economy. According to the Supreme Court of the United States, exchanging money is actually a kind of speech. This paper examines philosophical arguments undergirding the connection between speech and money, which is so prevalent in the public sphere, from an educational point of view. How do we learn the link between speech and money? As educators and researchers, what do we do and say that shores up this connection, and--as we may be inclined--are there things we can do or say to loosen it? Looking closely at the philosophical and educational literatures on classroom discussion and how discussion is cast as an exchange, this paper takes a Marxian approach to economic imaginaries of language in educational discourse.