Markets in everything?

04 May, 2026

I like markets.

Properly implemented and regulatged, I think they are generally the best fundamental arrangement of society, in both private and public, for maximizing human flourishing. I like online retailer competition. I like free trade. I dislike tariffs. I like congestion pricing for highway tolls. I dislike exclusionary zoning. I like prediction markets. I like airline deregulation. I like no-fee DIY online brokerage accounts. I like popular elections for governments.

But like many other observers, I’ve grown concerned over the past year about the ever-increasing overt marketization of society. Seemingly everyone is now a speculator—and everything is a speculation. Rip-off or be ripped-off. Frictionless online gambling. Cryptocurrency. The ever-increasing optimization of retail pricing, based on endless consumer data. The relentless à la carte streaming services and nickel-and-dime opaque add-ons with airline purchases. And the surely-associated enshittification of, if not everything, a lot of thigns, especially online. Are you a sharp or a fish?

It feels like we are steadily marching toward a world of micro-level price discrimination, where the cost of not getting completely ripped-off is borne by the consumer in the form of a massive annoying time investment. You really want to live in the market-efficient world where boxes of cereal are priced based upon how badly you are perceived to want them?

And I say this as someone who has always loved taking a market-based EV mindset to everything, from churning credit cards to buying plane tickets to optimizing political strategy and evaluating Halloween hauls.

A year ago, I would not—and did not—hesitate to challenge people to back their nonsense statements about politics with bets. If someone said, “Trump is definitely going to try to cancel the midterms elections” I’d usually respond with “what does definitely mean to you? 95% chance?” and then see if they would lay me 10-1 on a $50 bet. The whole “tax on bullshit” thing. You want your verbal externality, you are going to pay for it.

I’ve stopped doing this. In part, because people hate it. I mean, really hate it. And not just in the my-externality-is-now-being-priced sense. I always thought that was the reason. But now I’m coming around to the idea that it’s really about being forced into market-situations not of their making and not of their choosing.

You might say those are the same thing. But I’m not so sure.

I was reading last week about the Harberger tax, which is both a super-clever market solution to something, and also the essence of what people hate about being forced into markets which they previously could opt-out. It crystalized—at least for me—what I suspect has been bothering a lot of people.

The canonical Harberger tax was used by the Danish Crown to tax shipping. They wanted to levy a 1% tax on all goods that passed through their channel. But everyone argue about the value of the goods. So instead, they let the shipper just name the price of the goods. The catch? The Crown can buy your goods at the price you set. This gives the shippers complete incentive to set a fair market price.

The potential applications of this are endless. Take property taxes. The county and the residents can just stop haggling. No more disputes. No more paperwork. Just set the value of your property at whatever you think it’s worth, and pay the tax on that. But anyone can buy your house at that price.¹

Great! A market-based solution with real public value. Reduced bureaucracy. Efficient taxation and capital allocation. Win-win.

People would lose their fucking minds if you proposed this. Like, if you want off the county board of supervisors, here’s your platform.

And, I think, most of the anger would be about being forced into a market for which they could previously opt-out. The time it would take to research home values. The insecurity of always maybe having to move, just because someone values your land more than you do. Most people would likely build-in a significant price cushion, that reflected not just market value, but the transactional costs of relocating and all the rest.

But I think most of the anger would be about having to price sentimentality. People like their neighborhoods and their neighbors. People like their homes. They attach memory and nostalgia to them. A Harberger property tax wouldn’t require you to give any of that up, but it would require you to put a value on it.

For an economist, that’s more or less just bringing an externality under control. Efficiency and more accurate price-discovery, all in one. A Good Thing.

For the average person, it’s capitalism creeping into places it shouldn’t go. And it finally made me understand why people hate the bets on bullshit statements.

I know I’ve always thought there was a line to be drawn with the basic extension of properly-regulated retail and labor markets—I’ve certainly always believed you shouldn’t be able to sell yourself or your children into slavery in perpetuity. I have no idea where the line should actually be—another thing to optimize!—and I’m also still pretty sure that a democratic society is going to put it earlier down the path than I would think optimal.

But I think my normative line has moved somewhat closer to our current state affairs than I had it even just a year ago.

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#markets