Al Roth's concept of 'repugnant transactions' — things some people want and others oppose on moral grounds, regardless of harm — puts assisted dying in the same historical bucket as same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. Social support, Roth argues, is what makes or breaks any contested market.
Where this was said
At 8:02 · chapter starts 5:40
Dubner pivots from the emotional story of Kahneman to a more analytical frame, introducing Al Roth as perhaps the world's leading authority on repugnant transactions — his term for market exchanges that some people want but others morally oppose, even if they can't tell whether the transaction has occurred [1] — Al Roth "Al Roth's concept of 'repugnant transactions' — things some people want and others oppose on moral grounds, regardless of harm — puts assis…" 08:02 . Roth's new book, 'Moral Economics,' dedicates a chapter to the growing acceptance of assisted dying. The conversation first detours through kidney exchange — Roth's signature contribution, which has helped save thousands of lives by matching donors and recipients without cash — to establish his credibility in designing markets where standard pricing mechanisms are socially unacceptable. Roth then defines repugnant transactions and places MAID in historical company with same-sex marriage and interracial marriage, both once banned and now legal. The framing is dispassionate but clarifying: whether a transaction is repugnant is a social fact, not a permanent moral verdict. Roth notes that markets need social support to function, and that his job as a market designer is to understand that social landscape — not just the economics — before intervening.
Al Roth noted that 500,000 people are on dialysis in the United States, with almost 100,000 on the waiting list for a deceased donor kidney.
Assisted dying has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, and now 12 US states plus D.C. have followed. The American movement was slow and contentious, shaped by figures like Jack Kevorkian, and is now arriving in major states like New York.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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