Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to

another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you. My guess today is Mike Munger, Professor of Economics and Political Science

at Duke University. Mike, welcome back once again to Econ Talk. It's great to be here. Mike,

today's show is a bit of an experiment. It's a grab bag show, or maybe potluck is a better

way to describe it. We're going to sample a bunch of different dishes rather than sticking

with a single theme. We'll start with a variety of environmental issues. Then I hope we'll

turn to sports. If we have time a few other topics that I have in mind. Many of the items

we're going to discuss today are from listener emails or comments where people have asked

for clarification or raised issues that I thought were of interest. They might not deserve

a whole podcast, but I think we're talking about it. I thought it'd be fun to chat with

you about it. As usual, to our listeners out there, if you like or dislike this slight

break from our usual format, feel free to let me know at mail at econtalk.org. Mike, we

did a podcast a few months ago on recycling and on garbage and resources and waste, and

on both the psychology of recycling and the economics. I want to revisit an issue that came

up there that I think deserved some additional discussion that we didn't probably talk about

in enough detail. Let's start by recapping what the argument was. You argued that if people

are willing to pay you for something, it's a resource. If they're not, it's garbage.

And implying that if you recycle something that, if you have to pay someone to take something

from you, then it's garbage. That's the definition of garbage. Is that a fair assessment

...