For a long time, many people have felt incredible contradictions between my mentality and academic experience. You are obviously a Marxist-Leninist of Peking University. Why are you so right? It's actually quite simple. If you really pursue democracy, freedom, equality and prosperity, if you really believe in Marxism instead of learning to stick to the party, then if you come into contact with the theories of Coase and Hayek, you will definitely become a liberal. Why? Because people who truly believe in Marxism-Leninism believe that the big government line can solve all the sufferings and poverty in the world, but the theories of Coase and Hayek, both logically and empirically, quickly make you understand that free market, private property rights and limited government are the fundamental paths to prosperity and freedom. Hayek aside, today only talk about Coase. Coase asked a simple question: since the free market is so good, why do organizations like enterprises still exist? According to economic theory, isn't it very reasonable? Price guides everything, and the market will rationally arrange resource allocation. Where is the need for enterprise organization? The answer is that transactions have costs. It is impossible for employers to bargain with workers for wages in the market every day, let alone bargain with workers for factory rents and buy and sell assets, equipment or other factors of production. They can only sign long-term contracts and organize all production factors into an enterprise, and the role of the enterprise is to save transaction costs. Then, if enterprises can save transaction costs and arrange factory production in an organized and planned way, can the resources of production factors of the whole society be fully incorporated into one organization and organize production as planned? Comrades must have thought of it immediately. This is the content of the manifesto of the Producers' Party. But the trouble is that enterprises can save transaction costs marginally. When the scale of the organization reaches a certain level, the internal organization coordination also has a cost, which is definitely greater than the market transaction cost. As long as comrades who have worked in large enterprises or government agencies understand this truth, bureaucracy and red tape are rampant, and information is asymmetric from top to bottom, including principal-agent risks. That is, managers don't take the interests of shareholders seriously, and there will be more and more problems. In the end, the organization will definitely not run. Therefore, the unlimited and all-encompassing planned economy is essentially to bind social and economic resources together and turn them into a big factory. This seems to save the transaction cost, even make the transaction cost zero, but as long as it is a social division of labor, it has its own costs, which are not necessarily reflected in market transactions, and the internal organization and management costs are definitely there. As long as the cost of this organization reaches a certain level, the whole economy will be paralyzed. Therefore, * * * capitalism will definitely become characteristic socialism in the end, and then … Another academic contribution of Coase is that it is clear that the conclusion of market transactions is based on clear property rights. In the case of unclear property rights, the transaction cost is too high, it is impossible to reach a transaction, and it is difficult to have a large-scale and deeper social division of labor. The so-called clarity of property rights is often touched in Coase's works, but it is Zhang Wuchang, Coase's imperial lecturer, who really expresses it clearly and systematically. Coase's definition of property right is not the relationship between people and things, but the definition of rights between people. Zhang Wuchang further clarified three basic definitions of property rights: the right of use, the right of income and the right of free transfer. Other rights of property right are its extension. This logical definition suddenly makes the concept of ownership vulgar, and the vague theoretical tone of capitalism and socialism seems to be similar to asking ghosts and gods. Coase's influence in China is far greater than that in Europe and America. The reason is that China people, especially adult China people, have basically experienced the history before and after the productivity explosion caused by the reform of property rights system. The actual feeling of institutional change is so profound in the impression of a generation that it is very rare in other countries and regions in the world. For those who pursue the ultimate answer of freedom and prosperity, Coase's theory is as clear as a bowl of clear water by comparing the life differences between the people of the North and the South, the great changes before and after the reform for 30 years, and the changes of the times before and after Su Dongpo's great changes. However, Coase's institutional economics theory is only a basic model. In fact, Coase's academic articles are basically a lot of real cases in daily life, rather than dazzling mathematical models or mysterious theories. Because of the size of transaction cost and the change of property rights, we can only understand them one by one in the real world, and at least do the minimum literature sorting work. It is impossible to sit in the room and pat our heads. Whether explaining the changes in the real world or speculating about the future trend, we can only find the biggest constraint, which lazy people can't do. They only listen to conclusions. As for the limitation of reasoning process and conditions, they are impatient to spend this effort. I have a hunch that Coase has great contempt for blackboard economists like Samuelson. As an economist, academic ethical values determine that he despises these economics professors with high IQ and low IQ. In fact, in the face of Coase's brilliant thought, the neoclassical academic professors headed by Samuelson also made a compromise. The famous Coase theorem goes like this: "When the transaction cost is zero, no matter who is given property rights at the beginning, the final result of market equilibrium is efficient and Pareto optimality of resource allocation is realized." It seems that Wikipedia wrote it like this, and Samuelson wrote it in his economics textbook. Is this fucking ridiculous? ! The transaction cost is zero. Oh, the economy under Stalin system means that the transaction cost is zero. It doesn't matter who is endowed with property rights. Will the result be the best? What about the Su Dongpo incident? What happened to China's economic reform? I estimate that Coase is disgusted with this, because an economist who is so elegant and gentleman directly announced that there has never been such a thing as Coase Theorem, and it was openly said to the top academic authorities in Europe and America, and his heart was not extremely disgusted. This is beyond description. Every time I read Zhang Wuchang's works, I can't restrain my ambition-this place will compete with this old guy! That place is shit! When reading Friedman's things, I subconsciously bowed my head and thought about it. Is this tone an old man pretending? ! I don't think so. Every time I look at Hayek's stuff, my face is livid, damn it. So far, it's enough to look at this guy's stuff once. Just looking at Coase's things, I always have a little nostalgia in my heart. Although my English is poor, I still can't help looking over the original. In fact, we diaosi are an ordinary scoundrel, born in Pengmen, but we always feel ashamed when we meet noble people. The so-called British style of study is probably the case. I will always be disappointed when I go, so I regard this article as a subject. Go well. (Xu Bin)