[Books of the Week] The Economics of Forbidden Transactions and More

The Economics of Forbidden Transactions

What cannot be bought with money, and who draws that boundary? Alvin Roth, the 2012 Nobel laureate in economics and a pioneer of "market design," dives into the spaces economics finds most awkward to address. Prostitution, surrogacy, adoption, high-interest loans, profiteering during disasters, drugs, medically assisted death, vaccine clinical trials, and even blood and kidney sales—all these exchanges are desired by the participants but halted by society’s assertion that “this should not be done.” Roth groups these under the concept of “repugnance.” Particularly, while most countries prohibit paying for a kidney, the shortage of organs persists, giving rise to the paradox that the more these forbidden transactions are driven underground, the more participants become exposed to crime and risk. This point sharply illustrates the central concern of the book.

This does not mean Roth argues for letting markets do everything. The sharper question is whether our moral intuitions always align with actual harm. Just as social norms once criminalized same-sex relations or interracial marriage but later changed—repugnance, too, has a historical context. Conversely, permitting transactions sometimes leads to greater exploitation of the vulnerable. After considering how prohibitions, such as Prohibition, drug regulation, and early COVID-19 price surges, did not always mean protection, it becomes difficult to view the market and morality as simple adversaries. If economics is about calculating prices, this book pushes for the question of what should not have a price at all to be an economic inquiry. The more uncomfortable the exchange, the more critically we must examine our grounds for judgment. That is the provocation of this 468-page work. (Written by Alvin Roth | Translated by Kyungsik Lee | Saenggakuihim Publishing)

What History Teaches Us

After fifty years and writing eleven volumes of “The Story of Civilization,” Will Durant and Ariel Durant left behind a final book—only 200 pages in length. Spanning geography, biology, ethnicity, character, morality, religion, economics, socialism, political systems, war, and culminating with the question “Is progress real?”—they compress thousands of years of history into a dozen or so lenses. The meaning behind the first chapter’s title, “Hesitation,” is significant—the authors admit that reducing ten thousand years of human history into a few hundred pages is risky, and yet they dare to attempt it. Ultimately, they conclude that the first lesson history offers humanity is not the law of victory, but “humility.” This is their grand distillation.

Throughout the book, you’ll find yourself both amazed and critical. Their diagnosis that war is a near constant throughout recorded history, and the insight that civilization is a communal legacy built from the accumulated cooperation of various groups, remain powerful. On the other hand, applying biological competition directly to human society, perceiving inequality as natural, or the language used to discuss “ethnicity” can be hard for today’s readers to accept as is. Yet, it is precisely by reading even this outdatedness that the book becomes more intriguing. More than fifty years have passed since the Pulitzer-winning couple insisted that human nature barely changes; yet, desire, fear, competition, and cooperation still appear repeatedly in the news, merely under different faces. History does not provide answer sheets. Rather, it shows us how frequently events we believe to be unprecedented have already happened under different names. (Written by Will Durant and Ariel Durant | Translated by Ahn Inhee | Dolbegae Publishing)

Narrative Management

The reason strategy meetings are boring may not be because of too many numbers. Gen Kusunoki argues that filling the agenda with revenue targets, customer counts, product specifications, and distribution plans does not constitute strategy unless they are connected by a logic that answers, “Why does doing this lead to that?” To him, a good strategy is not a checklist, but a story. Why did Southwest Airlines abandon its hub airports? Why did Starbucks insist on company-owned stores and create a “third place”? How does Amazon’s flywheel concept have each element push the others? Examining such cases, he dissects strategy into five “C’s:” concept, components, critical core, competitive advantage, and consistency. There’s a reason why this book, first published in Japan in 2010 and having sold over 300,000 copies, has been translated again after 15 years: its advice transcends trends.

Here, “story” does not mean merely giving your brand a compelling narrative for marketing purposes. The core is a structure where a seemingly irrational choice, when linked with other factors, creates a powerful rationality overall. Because of what the author calls the “critical core,” competitors who merely imitate bits and pieces only end up diverging further from the original company. The author’s excitement over a used car dealership executive’s slide-free presentation—explaining “if you do this, that happens…”—underscores the point. While some corporate examples feel dated, the demand to see strategy not as “what to do,” but as “why those aspects are connected and generate profit,” remains sharp as ever. Ultimately, a good strategy is not perfect in a report, but is a living narrative within the organization, vivid enough for its people to naturally explain what happens next. (Written by Gen Kusunoki | Translated by Yongtaek Lee | 21st Century Books)

Fantasy Communities

Why is the love for idols so often dismissed as “fake”? Minseon Maeng inverts that question, examining how K-pop creates elaborate fantasies and how fans actively live them out. Concept universes such as EXO’s superpower lore, music videos, “home master” photography, messaging apps, live broadcasts, concerts, and fan signings—all are devices that conjure up beings who do not exist in reality and, at the same time, channels for fans to experience real emotions. Fans are not drawn to idols because everything is “genuine,” but because, in the fleeting moments between the screen and the stage, they layer in their own memories and desires. With a background in Korean literature and psychology, and specializations in philosophy and science & technology studies, the author overlays personal “fanhood” with academic discourse, showing how K-pop becomes a commodity, an image, a technology, and a secular ritual.

As the book progresses, the focus shifts from idols themselves to the fans. The experience of “seeing in person,” the images crafted beyond the lens, the communities formed in front of screens, and concerts that become collective pilgrimages—through all these, people with different fantasies briefly become “us.” Community here is closer to a loose and provisional simultaneity than to solid cohesion. When a concert ends, everyone returns home and the sense of sacredness peels away, but the shared sensations linger. It is refreshing that the book does not neatly define fandom as either a resistance community or a consumption group. In the end, fantasy is not an escapist fake world, but can serve as a unique sensibility that makes reality bearable. (Written by Minseon Maeng | Dolgorae Publishing)

The Society of Fantasy

In the past, people occasionally snuck glances at others’ lives; now, the moment we wake up, we see them everywhere. Careers of the successful, bodies sculpted by exercise, stylish homes, happy families, and even people seemingly perfectly themselves—all are images flowing by, always a step ahead of where we are. Jiwoo Jung calls humans of this era “Homo Phantasma.” If Guy Debord’s “society of the spectacle” imposed a single image on the masses, the algorithmic age imprisons individuals in thousands of personalized ideals. Every video watched a few seconds longer, every “like” pressed, shapes one's tastes, and these in turn further reinforce themselves. The call to “be yourself” mutates into constant pressure to endlessly update yourself to be presentable to others. The author identifies this feeling, coined as “permanent-anxiety,” as a new zeitgeist encompassing FOMO, burnout, and dopamine crashes.

On the surface, such diagnoses sound like familiar criticisms of social media. But the author takes a step further in the later chapters—“world-building.” Don’t force yourself to fill the holes in your life. See through the false promise of perfection. Use social media not as a showcase, but as a space for production and solidarity. Instead of one success track, embrace multiple lines of life. While the section proposing to manage life like a profile risks sounding like another round of self-improvement language, the author’s “profile” is closer to an “antifragile” life—not a list of specs, but a state where a single failure does not make you collapse. The real issue is not in the images themselves, but in losing all your time by watching others’ desires. If we cannot escape fantasy, the book suggests, at least we can choose in whose fantasy we live. (Written by Jiwoo Jung | Hankyoreh Publishing)

The Birth of the Egoist

Max Stirner doubted nation, religion, morality, and even the concept of “humanity” itself. As soon as any idea claims an authority above individuals and commands obedience, he saw it turning into a “ghost.” After publishing “The Ego and Its Own” in 1844, this German philosopher faced fierce criticism from Marx and Engels and later became marginalized in the history of philosophy. Hongkyu Park seeks to peel off the “radical egoist” label that has stuck to Stirner. Stirner’s “egoist” is not someone who tramples on others for self-gain, but rather a “unique one” who refuses to lean on answers handed down by nation, doctrine, or tradition, and lives according to conscience. Having translated “The Ego and Its Own” in 2023, the author now reinterprets Stirner’s life, era, and key ideas within the span of 312 pages.

What’s interesting is that Park does not put Stirner in a museum. By placing the “unique one” alongside Marx, Nietzsche, anarchism, Foucault’s notion of care for the self, and even the Buddhist concept of non-self, the author brings Stirner into contemporary life. While Nietzsche’s “overman” suggests a vision for a chosen few, Stirner’s “unique one” is interpreted here as every human being an irreplaceable entity, clearly expressing the author’s focus. Yet Park does not hide the limitation that Stirner himself never detailed “how exactly to live as a unique one.” In the end, the pursuit is not for isolated individualism. The lingering question is how people, each not a copy of anyone else, can coexist without oppressing one another. In the word “egoist,” which sounds most selfish, the book finds a paradoxical foundation for solidarity. (Written by Hongkyu Park | Arcanet Publishing)

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.