Benefits from Trade Day

Friday, November 1st, 2013

November 1, the day after Halloween, should be known as Benefits from Trade Day:

Friday, American children will be making piles out of their loot: stuff they want to keep, and stuff they want to swap for treats they actually like. They will then commence creating and participating in a market, trading things they don’t want for things they want, negotiating exchange rates between various bite-size currencies, and sometimes trading things they do want for things they want more, or for more of something else they want.

They do this entirely out of self-interest: because it will increase their happiness. No adult needs to coerce them into trading, or even suggest or facilitate it.

There is no better day to teach kids about the benefits of trade (and about subjective value), so I propose we promote November 1 as Benefits from Trade Day.

Mr. Cyberpunk

Friday, November 1st, 2013

Mr. Cyberpunk, William Gibson, the science-fiction author who coined the term, isn’t very cyberpunk:

On a short walk to lunch one afternoon, from the two-story mock-Tudor house where he lives with his wife, Deborah, he complained about a recent visit from a British journalist, who came to Vancouver searching for “Mr. Cyberpunk” and was disappointed to find him ensconced in a pleasantly quiet suburban patch of central Vancouver. Mr. Cyberpunk seemed wounded by having his work pigeonholed, but equally so by the insult to his home, which is quite ­comfortable, and his neighborhood, which is, too. “We like it quiet,” he explained.

He sounds a bit like Neal Stephenson’s neo-Victorians, really. This bit sounds rather more SWPL:

When I’m writing a book I get up at seven. I check my e-mail and do Internet ablutions, as we do these days. I have a cup of coffee. Three days a week, I go to Pilates and am back by ten or eleven. Then I sit down and try to write. If absolutely nothing is happening, I’ll give myself permission to mow the lawn. But, generally, just sitting down and really trying is enough to get it started. I break for lunch, come back, and do it some more. And then, usually, a nap. Naps are essential to my process.