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Whenever a rule, tax, or power imbalance prevents a mutually beneficial exchange from happening, value doesn't just transfer — it evaporates entirely. Neither party captures it. This is the hidden cost of intervention: not the money collected or the price changed, but the phantom transactions that never occur and the surplus that ceases to exist. The deepest implication is that inefficiency isn't merely suboptimal allocation — it is genuine destruction of potential value that can never be recovered.
