The Answer Is Transaction Costs
"The real price of everything is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." -Adam Smith (WoN, Bk I, Chapter 5)
In which the Knower of Important Things shows how transaction costs explain literally everything. Plus TWEJ, and answers to letters.
If YOU have questions, submit them to our email at taitc.email@gmail.com
There are two kinds of episodes here:
1. For the most part, episodes June-August are weekly, short (<20 mins), and address a few topics.
2. Episodes September-May are longer (1 hour), and monthly, with an interview with a guest.
Finally, a quick note: This podcast is NOT for Stacy Hockett. He wanted you to know that.....
The Answer Is Transaction Costs
Latest Episodes
Hereditary Monarchy: At Least You Know Which Idiot Is Next
Hereditary monarchy seems like a ridiculous way to pick a leader, yet it dominates most of human political history. We argue the reason is transaction costs: succession systems survive when they settle “who rules next” cheaply enough to prevent...
Swollen Permits? Call Chile!
Permits feel like “just paperwork”, until they quietly become the biggest barrier to building, investing, and even basic economic growth. We use Chile’s fight with “permisologia” to show how bureaucracy creates delay, uncertainty, and political...
Honor Among Thieves: Anja Shortland and Ransomware
A talk with Dr Anya Shortland about the economics of ransomware and the gray-zone institutions that let extortion markets function when nobody can truly enforce trust. We dig into how cyber insurance quietly becomes a form of governance, why da...
Are Transaction Costs Really Just Human Distance
We connect Adam Smith’s moral psychology to the modern idea of transaction costs and argue that the biggest frictions in markets start with the cost of understanding other people. We show how sympathy, propriety, self command, and reputation tu...
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations Episode 10: Always Contemporary
We assess Adam Smith’s enduring ideas—moral authorization of commerce, division of labor, emergent order—and confront where his optimism breaks: how democratic politics and business fuse to create monopoly privilege. The result is a maintenance...
Fan Mail
I was listening to the podcast and a specialist on COMECON was mentioned during the introduction. I was curious, what is their name? Thanks, Daniel S
Annapolis, Maryland