change is part of life, even from the youngest age. At first, little kids fight over stuff and their parents have to settle it. But as they get older, perhaps after the age of 6 or so, they discover something wonderful. They can avoid punching and anger, trade with each other, and both parties come away happy.
Exchange is never more wonderfully on display than the day after Halloween when the candy economy at school becomes most elaborate.
My own earliest memories of trading involved, inevitably, marbles on the school playground. I just asked around the office. Every guy said the same thing. We developed vast systems for valuing collections. We had names for everything: cat's eye, steely, galaxy, milky. We believed we knew what was and was not valuable, no doubt based on scarcity, and the metrics were constantly changing.
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