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We explore why money became the default middleman and how a modern platform can make barter practical by slashing the costs of search, matching, and trust. Founder Jassim Baqer shares the story behind Tbadel, what people actually trade, and how reputation, bundling, and scale (might) make swaps work.

• Adam Smith’s "double coincidence of wants" problem and transaction costs
• Platforms as connection engines that lower search and matching costs
• Tabottle’s origin, goals and name meaning exchange in Arabic
• How offers, counteroffers and bundles enable fair value without prices
• Building trust with profiles, ratings, in‑app messaging and reporting
• Local meetups versus future delivery options to cut transfer costs
• Why density and subcommunities unlock multi‑party and chain trades
• What trades dominate now: books, electronics, kids’ gear and services
• AI matching, alerts and global exchange as the growth roadmap
• Two‑sided market dynamics and the path to scale

Tbadel Web Site

Jassim Baqer on LinkedIn

From JJ's letter: Photos of "Parklet" in San Francisco.

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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Tracing out Adam Smith’s Book IV, chapters 1–6, to show how mercantilism mistakes money for wealth, how protection creates monopolies at home, and why free exchange raises real prosperity. Smith defends two narrow exceptions—defense and tax parity—while rejecting bounties and politicized treaties that entangle trade with war.

• mercantile vs physiocratic systems and their influence
• wealth as goods and industry, not specie
• balance of trade as a “pestilent error”
• make-or-buy logic and misallocation from tariffs
• invisible hand clarified and limited
• natural vs acquired advantages in specialization
• two exceptions: national defense and tax parity on imports
• drawbacks as refunds vs bounties as subsidies
• corn bounties, higher home prices, cheaper foreign prices
• specie hoards as dams that inevitably overflow
• treaties of commerce, Methuen example, political risk
• case for unilateral free trade over reciprocity

Mentioned in the podcast:

• Laura Williams on Pineapples
• Pineapples in Sweden
• Oren Cass on Adam Smith
• Dan Klein's Law and Liberty piece on Oren Cass on Adam Smith

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution.

• institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentives
• why Smith’s natural order inverts in Europe
• the physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critique
• Solow’s technology vs North’s institutions vs McCloskey’s ideas
• Joel Mokyr's synthesis and improvement (written BEFORE he Nobel'ed!)
• feudal constraints primogeniture and entail suppressing agriculture
• towns as islands of order through charters and fixed rents
• the king–burgher alliance against barons
• merchants as improvers of land and capital risk-takers
• commerce introducing liberty and good government
• Smith’s “most important” passage and its modern relevance

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz