Comments (14)

• Mike

  This post made me smile :-).

  Published: October 31, 2009 1:52 PM

• Brad

  This is brilliant and entertaining.

  Published: October 31, 2009 3:10 PM

• Matt

  Excellent. Something light of heart about which we can smile a bit!

  Published: October 31, 2009 8:49 PM

• Konstantin

  Very amusing story. Though there is one thing that would be closer to the truth of the Fed 3M Factory.

  The 3Ms from the Fed would be empty wrappers of 3M candy bars that only look like the real thing perhaps filled with worthless sugar.

  Published: October 31, 2009 8:53 PM

• pbergn

  Nice Halloween analogy by Mr. Tucker!
  
  But what happens when all the candy runs out, i.e. is accumulated in the hands of a few lucky (possibly obese) kids?!
  
  I'm sure this is when the fun is over, lights are out, and somebody loses an eye...
  
  Oh well, it's Halloween after all...

  Published: October 31, 2009 9:42 PM

• Ribald

  I'm glad the kids were able to trade well in their zero-sum economy and reach Pareto efficiency.

  I've seen other methods of candy-sorting prevail, though. In my house, we'd usually pool our candies together and let anyone take what they wanted, since we didn't want to leave anyone out (even those who didn't go trick-or-treating).

  Frankly, though, the fun of wearing a costume and being with friends was usually an equal or greater thing than the candy.

  Published: November 1, 2009 1:01 AM

• Vicki

  Jeff,
  I've witnessed this very scenario over the course of countless years. What a hoot!

  But Halloween dynamics have changed drastically in the past few years: last night we had 3 trick-or-treaters (and we live in suburbia). Each was a young boy (11-13) chauffeured & escorted to the door by his mom (equiped with flashlight). How lame is this?

  I call this new dynamic: How contraception ruined Halloween (along with a zillion more important things!). While the number of trick-or-treaters has been steadily dwindling I've not yet adjusted my own candy purchases, so now we have a surplus which my kids assume is theirs, without having worked for it. So either I have to buy less candy in the future, or consume it myself. Hmmm.

  Published: November 1, 2009 11:42 AM

• Abhilash Nambiar

  It is better to catch these habits early.

  Published: November 1, 2009 3:01 PM

• Ryan

  Ha! Great article. I think you should put together a simplified version of it for use in teaching children a few economic principles on Halloween.

  Published: November 2, 2009 2:21 AM

• Mr Eko

  Wonderful article Jeff. I guess that us parents represent the state, waiting for our little earners and exchangers to go to bed, and then raiding their cache. We even claim to have altrustic motives (they don't need to be eating all that junk anyways.....)

  Published: November 2, 2009 7:42 AM

• Philip Dimon

  Brilliant. I Loved it.

  Published: November 2, 2009 8:47 AM

• Michael A. Clem

  But what happens when all the candy runs out, i.e. is accumulated in the hands of a few lucky (possibly obese) kids?!
  
  First, you have to explain how all the remaining candy is "accumulated" by a few kids, when Jeffery went to the trouble of explaining in great detail the voluntary trading process, and how all the kids left the table with more of their preferred candy and less of their unpreferred candy.
  
  You seem to assume that voluntary trading, which only takes place when both parties benefit from the trade, somehow leads to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. But you fail to explain just how this mysterious result happens.
  
  If it does happen, then what we really need to ask is what coercive intervention has taken place to prevent or restrict voluntary trade.
  

  Published: November 2, 2009 3:43 PM

• Vanmind

  Once again, wrong. Every year the following explanation somehow becomes necessary -- when are the people at the LvMI going to grab a clue?

  Halloween is the day when children don approved uniforms and stand in queues to be handed something -- maybe not anything they actually want -- from self-professed authority figures who have used the night's legitimization of central planning to decide what this society-of-children will be allowed to have. After standing on line all night, the children gather together in the "black market" of a parent's living room, trading this for that in an attempt to bring some semblance of legitimate catallactics to the whole entrepreneurship-killing ordeal.

  Halloween is play-acting at communism.

  "Ooh, it's not like XMAS where pretend government showers kids with gifts -- on Halloween the kids have to do something." Yeah, they have to stand in line like Soviet citizens once did, before gathering in private to exchange the "crap I got for that cool stuff you got," so it's more accurate than XMAS as a portrayal of the propaganda that acclimatizes kids to accept their future as slaves to the State (using black market barter items as an inferior kind of money). The kids do not mix their labor with anything at all -- they have parents buy State-approved (as in: "Our neighbors will approve") uniforms on their behalf.

  "Ooh, the candy you collect is yours." Yeah, so is the sugar that the Cuban government doles out to its citizens.

  "Ooh, it teaches about free exchange." No, it teaches about lining up to ask "authority" for a hand out, as well as the inevitable consequences of such fraudulent lessons -- like how they might get around the central plans of bureaucracy to attempt legitimate exchange on a black market.

  For shame, mises.org.

  Published: November 2, 2009 4:55 PM

• Daniel

  Konstantin: the fed's 3Ms are made with chocolate made with hydrogenated vegetable oil and sweetened with beet sugar

  Vanmind: what if a kid makes his own costume of a lawn dart? :P

  Published: November 3, 2009 1:53 PM