Ghost work economies sell themselves as software that can eliminate the expensive frictions of searching, matching, training, communicating with, and retaining workers. Yet, as Coase might have warned, communication and coordination among workers, and between workers and their employers, not only is necessary but is actually money well spent. For all the claims that ghost work can combine algorithms, artificial intelligence, and platform interfaces to replace the company's function as "the entrepreneur-coordinator, who directs production," there is evidence to the contrary. The transaction costs of ghost work don't melt away. Instead they are shifted to the shoulders of requesters and workers. Requesters must juggle all the management that typiaclly comes with scoping a new project and handing it to a new employee. They spend extra time and energy explaining tasks that they thought needed no explication once converted to code and relayed via APIs. Workers pay a disproportionately higher price: they lose their time, even their paychecks, with no opportunity to appeal any mistreatment. Many of the transaction costs passed on to requesters irror those shouldered by workers. Each hurdle faced demonstrates that ghost work isn't working smoothly for anyone involved.