We are told to cherish the endless curiosity of a child. But after enduring a grueling, unstructured Q&A session with my toddler niece this Mother’s Day, I am deeply concerned about the next generation's foundational understanding of market mechanics.
It is a cornerstone of our cultural mythology that we must revere the innocent, probing mind of a child. This Mother’s Day, I was subjected to this phenomenon firsthand when my three-year-old niece, Chloe, initiated what I can only describe as a wildly unfocused interrogation. "Why are some things special?" she asked, clutching a plastic tiara and a moderately smooth piece of driveway quartz. Her mother—my sister—teared up, clearly moved by the opportunity to see the world through her child's eyes. I, however, saw a young woman woefully unprepared for the realities of modern enterprise.
I set down my mimosa, pulled up a chair, and explained that "specialness" is not an intrinsic physical property, but rather a manufactured perception driven by restricted supply chains, aggressive intellectual property enforcement, and exclusionary pricing models. I walked her through the Veblen curve, using her tiara as a case study in how synthetic polymers can be marked up by 4,000 percent if correctly licensed by the Walt Disney Corporation.
Chloe asked, "But why is it pretty?" I realized then that her line of inquiry was fundamentally flawed. She was prioritizing aesthetics over liquidity. I informed her that the quartz she was holding had a barrier to entry of zero, rendering it entirely worthless on the secondary market. At this point, she began to cry—a classic emotional leverage tactic I’ve seen deployed by weak negotiators from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill. I simply maintained eye contact and waited for her to present a counteroffer.
We coddle the youth with whimsy when we should be drilling them on the fundamentals of asset depreciation. If a child cannot articulate the difference between a high-yield dividend and a shiny beetle by age four, they are already a liability.
I recently discussed this very issue with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers while we were waiting for our coats at a gala, and he agreed that the toddler demographic represents a massive sinkhole of unmonetized time. If a child is going to ask "Why?" four hundred times a day, those questions should at least be driving toward actionable deliverables. "Why is the sky blue?" yields no shareholder value. "How can we privatize the sky's lower atmosphere?" is the kind of disruptive thinking we should be fostering.
Eventually, my sister asked me to leave the brunch, claiming I was "ruining the morning" and "making the baby anxious about her credit score." It is a shame, really. Society is so terrified of hard truths that we would rather placate our children with fairytales about magic than equip them with the tools to corner a regional market. As I walked to my car, I took comfort in knowing that while Chloe may not understand brand equity today, she will certainly understand it when she is priced out of her first home.