This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 25, 2004.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In Strangers with Candy, author and economist Art Carden details the myriad ways in which technology

has made the extraordinary ordinary.

The power of reputation and the dynamism of markets have delivered incredible value to average people at reasonable cost,

even if we ultimately remain strangers to the people with whom we interact.

We spoke last month in Dallas.

My wife and I went on our honeymoon over Thanksgiving and through the early part of December in 2015. and we spent a good bit of time in Vietnam.

And I don't speak Vietnamese, but nonetheless was able to pull out my phone, order up an Uber, get into a stranger's car,

and be transported to various places in Saigon. This person didn't know me. I did not know this person. This person

is basing their decision whether or not to let me in their car on reputation

that I have acquired a thousand miles away.

Yep.

And I, likewise, am getting into a stranger's car on a reputation that he's acquired in a city that I've never been to in my life and that is amazing.

That is absolutely amazing. I had a similar experience in Guatemala City a few months ago. I don't speak Spanish.

Google Translate was a little bit helpful, but being able to get into a car with a stranger

and end up where I wanted to go for a few dollars was really

incredible. And it illustrates something that I think is super-duper important about the modern

world. If we think about the pieces of advice that our parents give us when

we're kids, two of them that really stand out are never take candy from

strangers and never get in a car with strangers. Lo and behold, what do

Uber and Lyft do? They make it easy for us to get in a car with strangers,

...