We can see that assets are the objects that flow between participants. Whereas participants have a significant degree of autonomy, assets are quite passive. This property of assets is foundational—assets tend to have the most meaning to the counter-parties who exchange them. That's not to say that other participants aren't interested in these assets, but it does emphasize the passive nature of assets. So what makes assets so important? Why are we bothering to talk about these passive objects?

The answer lies in our choice of word—asset. An asset is a thing of value. Even though assets are relatively passive, they represent the value that is exchanged between participants. Look at these example assets again with this value-based lens: coursework, education certificate, car, policy, and claim. Coursework is valuable to the teacher and student; an education certificate is valuable to the student and university; a car is valuable to the dealership and buyer; a policy is valuable to the insurance company and policy holder; a claim is valuable to the claimant and insurance company. Hopefully, it's now clear why assets are important, and why they are called assets!

As a minor note, don't think that because we have assets, we must have liabilities—we're not quite using the term this way. It's absolutely true that if we were to measure objects as counting for us, or counting against us, we would term them assets or liabilities, but that's not quite what's happening here—we're using asset as a concrete noun, rather than as a quality or abstract noun.