Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things...

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the book that established the field of public choice – The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. The year is also the thirtieth anniversary of Elinor Ostrom’s “Covenants With and Without a Sword,” in which she...