Does Halloween Oppose the Economic Principle of Self-Interest?

Why do people but candy with their own money and give it out at no cost? Spending money for strangers doesn't follow the principle of rational self-interest. Then again, why do people donate or buy presents? Their festive spirit may be the driving force in them giving out candy at no cost. I get why people walk around asking houses for candy, it's free candy! But I believe in order for there to be Halloween, everyone needs to contribute and be active in the community. 

A Buyers Market

In the December of 2007, my family decided to buy an extra house. At that time I was too young to understand that we had bought that house, not because I wanted it, but because it was the phase of the 'buyers market'. One of the shifters for Investment demand is expectation; my dad had maybe know that maybe the future wasn't so bright for buying a home therefore bought the house within a matter of a month. When recession occurred, we had put the old house up for sale, but quickly realized that no one would be willing to buy the house. According to our real estate agent, the best choice was to put it up for rent so we profit from the monthly checks rather than just waiting on someone to buy the property. 

Structural? Or Frictional?

I've had a second hand experience with frictional unemployment in my family. My mom was laid off from her job as a health inspector in a colored contacts company. After taking a month off, she started managing our Subway, and continued for 4-5 years. Due to a prolonged time off from her health inspector position, she couldn't get a job because she had 'lost her skills' and was 'not up to date with the new health guidelines and technology'. Strangely enough her frictional unemployment had turned into somewhat of structural unemployment.

What GDP Lacks.

I believe GDP is not an good indicator of the economy's well being because it is an understatement of other unaccounted essential factors that affect our market. Like it or not, the underground economy is an aspect that alters the market in many nations; the GDP doesn't account for the illegal transactions that occur in the black market. The GDP also avoids the emotional value and moral value of items, for example, the value of education, someone working hard to care for their family or the value in the amount of happiness! Lastly, due to illegal immigration and alien resident the gross domestic product that is counted per capita is most likely incorrect. Despite all these factors I'd also like to mention that having something is better than having nothing, in other words it's better to have flawed GDP information than have none so it's easier to compare our total market value of all final goods and services to other countries.

SHUT DOWNNN!

The shutting down of the government reminds me of my childhood. How? Well every time I played a video game with my friends and I knew that I was going to lose or there was going to be a problem with the outcome of the game, I just pulled the plug and shut down the game. But I was immature and childish back then. So many people are unemployed, national archives are shut down and even though we aren't directly affected, it is estimated that without our budget we will lose billions of dollars every week. This irrational decision can lead the US into a national crisis, causing nothing but chaos.