This Friday is Black Friday, although - if you've been anywhere near a store recently - you might have noticed that the sales seem to have started already.
In fact, as each year goes by, the deals seem to start earlier and end later.
Now, call me old-fashioned, but I still happen to think that a sale is a good thing, even if it's become more and more fashionable to look down upon "consumerism".
Leave it to the socialists to complain about businesses dropping their prices, for once, rather than complaining about raising them!
Of course, here at the Alberta Institute, we're proud capitalists.
We have no problem at all with a little consumerism now and again, because we believe in the power of free markets.
We know that in a truly free market, all transactions are voluntary transactions that only take place between a willing buyer and a willing seller, who come together and agree on a price - and who both mutually benefit from the transaction.
We understand that, by definition, that means that the very act of buying and selling something freely creates value, and improves our economy, because the trade would only take place if the buyer values the product they're receiving more than the money they're paying, and the seller values the money they're receiving more than the product they're providing.
We also realize that it is a lack of understanding of this key fact that lies at the heart of the fallacies that most anti-capitalists believe in.
They are perfectly happy to have the government step in and force someone to buy or sell something they don't want to, at a price they don't think is worth it, so to them, trade is a destructive force, where only one person wins at the expense of another.
That's why they think that the only way an economy can grow is through exploitation, either of people or of resources.
We know, instead, that an economy can grow from specialization, innovation, trade, finding efficiencies, or new production methods.
That's why we don't think engaging in voluntary trade, freedom of contract, or exchange is something to feel guilty about whether you're doing it on a Friday, a Monday, or any other day of the week.