Low-Cost Explanation of Cost

Do you want to really, deeply, profoundly understand cost in ways that even most economists don't quite understand it?  Read James M. Buchanan's Preface to his little 1969 masterpiece, Cost and Choice.  Even better, of course, is to read the entire book.  But the Preface itself – standing alone – is a work of genius that brilliantly gets across the main point of this important book.