Throughout my professional life I have been bothered by the narrow economic vision of “society” as a “place” where persons transact, but do not otherwise interact, or at least where transactions and interactions are somehow wholly independent and separable. Economists examine markets and exchange without clear reference to the actions and interactions that come before and after. The institutional structures of the real world, and of its markets, are far richer and more complex than the mythical ones of that abstract model. This book is an attempt to consider, explicitly and rigorously, the implications for human relationships of interacting in that broader environment. In writing it I have set myself two goals. The first is common in economics. I wish to make a serious contribution to the way in which economists think about the world. The second goal is much less common. I have tried to make that contribution intelligible. There is really no need for the writing in economics to be as horrid as it is. Meaningful analysis does not have to be so painful to read. There is a tendency in economics to equate turgid prose or elegant mathematics with careful thought. They are not inconsistent, of course, but neither are they identical.