Should There Be a Tax on Sending Emails? Attention Commons, Pigouvian Congestion Pricing, Van Zandt's Information Overload, Hashcash Proof-of-Work, and Coasean Inbox Property Rights

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 29, 2026 · 1h 7m

It costs less than a millionth of a cent to transmit an email across the planet, yet reading and triaging that email steals thirty seconds of irreplaceable human cognitive bandwidth. In the language of welfare economics, the inbox is an unpriced tragedy of the commons. Would a Pigouvian tax on sending emails fix it—or choke off valuable serendipitous communication? In Episode 471, we examine Timothy Van Zandt's information-overload theorem, Dwork-Naor and Hashcash computational proof-of-work, Loder-Van Alstyne refundable attention bonds, internal corporate communication budgets, and why…