Halloween: Social Contract?

 

One thing you should know about the Ferguson household is that my wife is a notorious Halloween Grinch.  She's always grumpy on Halloween and has no interest in decorations, costumes, or most importantly ... handing out candy.

I've found over recent years that very few of my friends hand out candy and I find this vexing and perplexing. When I ask them, everyone says they'd rather just turn out the lights and hide in the basement.  [Typically, I yell something like "We're living in a society, people!" when I find this out about someone - no doubt some of you have experienced this from me]  Now, I've never particularly loved hopping up every five seconds to run to the door - hoping to get there before the doorbell rings and my dog goes crazy, particularly because, as I stated above, my wife is a grinch and so I'm responsible for 100% of the candy dispensing (although, somehow despite the fact that I'm the one handing it out, my level of preparatory candy buying seems to be subject to household scrutiny?!?). However, despite the fact that it's a bit of a chore to hand candy out, I've always viewed this to be a social contract and part of an inter-generational chain of responsibility.  I'm sure the adults when I was a kid were no more eager to get up and run to the door to give me treats when I came up to their door as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle twenty-some years ago, but by God they did it!  Is this yet another instance of "The Greatest Generation" at work and my "generation X" of slackers dropping the ball?

From a "rational self-interest" economist perspective, handing out candy is somewhat odd behavior.  Is it pure altruism or something else?  A desire to be a part of a larger community?  A "quid pro quo" tacit agreement to ensure your own kids or future kids will have their own houses to visit?  Why don't we just buy a big sack of candy and give it directly to our own kids, rather than introducing the costly inefficiency of running around the neighborhood in the dark?

I'd be very interested to hear what some of my colleagues who know more about altruism, social norms, social networks, etc have to say about this.  (No doubt I'm teeing Nels up here to drop some Durkheim and Weber knowledge on us?) From my own perspective, grounded in public policy and game theoretic issues, I find a number of fascinating micro-cosmic aspects including the reflection of the greater trend of individualism and reduction in support for public funding of everything from parks and schools to welfare - specifically, for those who argue that private charity would fill the welfare role in the absence of government I would point to this smaller form of neighborhood charity and the number of free-riding grinches like my wife and friends.  Then again, you could just as easily point to me and the suckers like me who are doing exactly that.  

In the meantime, I hear the doorbell ringing and see a horde of zombies on my lawn.  Hopefully a bowl of Sour Patch Kids will be enough to ward off this particular apocalypse.