{"id":23799,"date":"2025-05-28T20:03:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T00:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-113\/volume-113-issue-4-april-2025\/micro-costs\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T00:10:07","slug":"micro-costs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-113\/volume-113-issue-4-april-2025\/micro-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Micro-Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The modern world is filled with tiny attentional impositions (cognitive-asks) that inflict small mental burdens (micro-costs) on virtually everyone, everywhere, all the time. Micro-costs make life worse, and everybody knows it. They sap collective energy; they lead to worse decisions; they exacerbate inequality; and they contribute to an overall sense of \u201cmismanagement\u201d in the world, a sentiment that readily pairs with destructive political impulses. Yet the law has essentially ignored micro-costs\u2014until now. In what follows, we construct a theory of micro-costs that gives the phenomenon analytic shape and charts a path forward for reform. Drawing on the insights of philosophy, economics, and cognitive science, we canvass the ways that micro-costs crowd out the best parts of life, impair cognitive performance, and inflame societal disaffection. Micro-costs are everywhere\u2014cutting across otherwise-disparate spheres of life\u2014because a host of technological, social, and organizational developments have made cognitive-asks cheaper, more valuable, and harder to avoid than in years past. Motivated by this diagnosis, the Article culminates with a number of ideas for regulating micro-costs on the ground.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Continue reading\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2025\/05\/Brennan-Marquez_Maher_Micro-Costs.pdf\"><strong><em>Micro-Costs<\/em><\/strong><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2025\/05\/Brennan-Marquez_Maher_Micro-Costs.pdf\" class=\"pdfemb-viewer\" style=\"\" data-width=\"max\" data-height=\"max\" data-toolbar=\"bottom\" data-toolbar-fixed=\"off\">Brennan-Marquez_Maher_Micro-Costs<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The modern world is filled with tiny attentional impositions (cognitive-asks) that inflict small mental burdens (micro-costs) on virtually everyone, everywhere, all the time. Micro-costs make life worse, and everybody knows [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16434,"featured_media":0,"parent":23778,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-23799","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16434"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23799"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23804,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23799\/revisions\/23804"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}