The not-so-great pumpkin....

In the past, I've written about why I thought Christmas was inefficient - why should I spend money on gifts that other people don't really want so other people will buy me gifts I don't really want, when we could just spend it on ourselves and get what we actually want (and in my case, get it cheaper)?

I never really thought about applying the same logic to Halloween. But (via marginal revolution comes this post from the American Enterprise Institute explaining why Halloween is inefficient. It would, after all, be cheaper and easier if people just gave out money and let kids buy candy they actually like.

Of course, this assumes that there is no value in the surprise of not knowing what you are getting from a house, the joy of getting something you like, the thrill of discovering a new confection that you hadn't had before, and bargaining skills of trading with siblings for candy you like (although I always got the shit end of the stick on this as a kid, since my older brother was allergic to nuts, so I ended up with all his nut candy and he ended up with an equal amount of my non-nut candy, by parental fiat).

But it's kind of moot point to me anway, since I've managed to dodge actually having to hand out candy the last few years. For the first three years of living on my own, I lived in the middle of the city, and as my landlord put it "in this neighborhood, there is no way I'm going to open the door for someone in a mask". Last year I ended up hanging out at a friend's house on Halloween. This year, I was all ready to hand out candy - I bought a 100-pack of assorted Hershey's items, complete with reususable tub - only to be asked to fill in tonight - one of my coworkers lives in Fell's Point, where there is a huge Halloween party, and wanted to get home early enough to get a parking spot. So I ended up bringing the candy to work today and my coworkers and I devoured it - all that is left is the unpopular lolipops and milk duds.