The Answer Is Transaction Costs

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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 recurring civil war. 
• Why hereditary monarchy is historically prevalent compared with democracy and universal suffrage 
• Why “divine right” stories often rationalize a choice people already find tolerable 
• Thomas Paine’s critique of hereditary succession and what it misses 
• Hobbes on the state of nature as what happens when sovereignty is contested 
• Succession as the master coordination problem of political order 
• Transaction costs applied to elections, enforcement, legitimacy, and rent seeking 
• Why elective monarchy can become an armed auction for total power 
• Bright line rules versus discretionary selection and why speed can beat “better” 
• How constitutional design lowers the cost of leadership transition when it works 
• The legitimacy problem and why dynasties converge on endogamy 
• The genetic consequences of endogamy and the Habsburg cautionary tale 
• Twedges, book recommendation, and a listener letter on board game “math trades” 

LINKS:
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 1776
Michael Munger, The Ugly Pig, 20224
A.P. Martinich, Thomas Hobbes:  A Biography, 1999.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.
Neal Schultz, Suicide Kings: Hereditary Monarchy, 2025
Tbadel Barter App
Cosmos Institute, Coasian Bargaining at Scale, 2025

If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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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 risk even when the stated goal is safety or environmental protection. 
• permits as transaction costs that quietly tax projects and entrepreneurship 
• why bureaucracy is not the same thing as government and why it crowds out market coordination 
• “permisologia” in Chile and how a one-stop shop becomes many counters 
• parallels to India’s license raj and the logic of rent seeking choke points 
• Dominga as a case study in shifting rules, scandal, and investment held hostage 
• documented GDP and jobs costs from permitting delay and collapsed processing capacity 
• Chile’s LMAS reform plan including deadlines, digitization, and sworn declarations with sanctions 
• Parkinson’s Law, bike shedding, and why committees obsess over trivial items 
• listener letter on commune life and how transaction costs show up inside “one big firm” 

Links:
What is  "Permisología"? https://comentarista.emol.com/2294117/27242033/Emol-Social-Facts.html
Framework Law (LMAS):  https://www.bluefieldresearch.com/research/chile-takes-another-step-towards-mining-reform/
Parkinson's Law and the "Law of Triviality":  https://fs.blog/parkinsons-law/
Twin Oaks Community:  https://www.twinoaks.org/
If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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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 data leaks change the game, and what national security risks emerge as everything gets connected. 
• criminal markets that sit between legal firms and underworld gangs 
• insurance as governance through protocols, repeat play, and incident response packages 
• why victims amplify risk when they throw money at crises 
• the origin story of early ransomware and the transaction costs that made it fail 
• step-by-step ransomware mechanics from phishing to exfiltration to encryption 
• how gangs price ransoms by reading cash flow and insurance certificates 
• leak sites, privacy regulation, and third-party liability as bargaining leverage 
• why cyber insurance is fragmented and slow to enforce security standards 
• deductibles, coverage caps, and market hardening that push better cybersecurity 
• AI-enabled phishing and the asymmetric arms race between attackers and defenders 
• state-linked ransomware, impunity jurisdictions, and critical infrastructure threats 
• efficiency versus resilience in smart cities and the Internet of Things 

Anja Shortland at Kings College London
Shortland's book, Dark Screens:  https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Screens-Hackers-Shadowy-Ransomware/dp/1541705750
Shortland's first TAITC episode: "Deals with shadows"

Links mentioned in podcast:
Alex Danco's pirate puzzle
Pete Leeson's book, The Invisible Hook
David Deutsch's book, The Beginning of Infinity

If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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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 turn separate perspectives into workable cooperation and why justice is the real precondition for a stable commercial order. 
• why transaction costs always exist and why institutions matter when exchange is costly 
• a brief history of the term from Coase to an early use in Scitovsky 
• transaction costs as asymmetric information and the cost of social coordination 
• Smith’s epistemic distance and why sympathy requires imaginative effort 
• propriety as social calibration through the impartial spectator 
• self command as the price of being socially intelligible 
• commerce as a practical school for restraint, trust, and predictability 
• the prudent man as a model of conduct that reduces suspicion and monitoring 
• Buchanan’s moral community, moral order, and moral anarchy as lenses on social stability 
• why society can survive without beneficence but not without justice 
• a listener’s college admissions case where interviews act as a separating equilibrium and improve aid allocation 

Links:
Liberty Fund eBook--Theory of Moral Sentiments (PAGES DO NOT MATCH UP WITH PRINT EDITION!)
TAITC with Steve Medema, on Coase and Transaction Costs
Dan Klein and Russ Roberts on Theory of Moral Sentiments
Tibor Scitovsky, 1940, Economica paper
Gustavo Dudamel’s ‘the wealth of nations’ Melds Opera and Economics - Bloomberg 
If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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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‑intensive commercial order that needs competition defended, not assumed.

• presumption for markets under secure property, justice, and competition
• division of labor as the main engine of productivity and growth
• invisible hand reframed as emergent order, not automatic virtue
• critique of mercantilism, monopoly privilege, and rent seeking
• limited but real state functions: defense, justice, public works, education
• motivational symmetry and public choice constraints on government
• trade clarity: buy where cheaper, specialize, gains from exchange
• competition as a public good that must be defended

Happy 250th birthday, Wealth of Nations

If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz