Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. I'm sure that

various mindscape listeners have opinions about markets in economics, the way that we set prices

and exchange rates for all sorts of goods and services. Markets are clearly everywhere, both,

of course, in capitalist countries, but even elsewhere, there

are things that play the roles of markets deciding how different people who want to sell

things and buy things can decide on a fair rate of exchange and make those exchanges happen.

They also have downsides.

You know, markets can be exploitative, they can be unfair, they can be monopolized and so forth.

Put aside all of those issues for the moment.

So forget about most of the ways in which markets help us or harm us in typical everyday situations.

Let's focus in on an ideal situation where you have one party who has something

that they don't need anymore. They want to get rid of it. They want to sell it. They want to

give it for some price to some other person. And you have another party who would like that

item and has some money or other commodities

in order to spend to get that item.

And they're both interested in doing this.

They would both be made happier by having this exchange happen.

Is it always a good thing to allow that exchange to happen?

You might say yes until you think about it a little bit more and you go like, well,

okay, there are counter examples.

Like what if the, as we'll talk about in this podcast, what if the good in question is a

contract to assassinate somebody?

...