In The Rich Man’s World

Diary Entry: January 17, 2025

The deadline is suffocating me. Two days left, and I’m still staring at the same paragraph, waiting for it to make sense. It won’t.

I’ve realized why no one is helping me. I emailed the department, the professors — radio silence. They aren’t helping because they don’t know the answer either.

It’s all ambiguity. That’s the trick. Coase writes these seemingly “clear” sentences that dissolve the moment you try to pin them down. Is it about efficiency? Is it about morality? He shifts the definitions of “harm” and “cost” until you don’t know which way is up. It’s not a theory; it’s a fog.

And I’m starting to think the ambiguity is the point. By keeping the rules vague, by turning fixed legal rights into fluid “market values,” he created a system where the answer is always whatever the person with the deepest pockets wants it to be. If the rule is ambiguous, the rich man wins.

He’s kidding us. He constructed a maze of smoke and mirrors so the wealthy can loot the building while the rest of us are stuck in a classroom arguing about the definition of “transaction costs.” It is absolute bullshit.