As my regular academic work slows down in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, my thoughts have turned toward gratitude. In a visceral way, I feel thankful for my family, for my work, for the exhilarating November air on a brisk walk around my neighborhood, for my friends both here in Ann Arbor and online, and for being alive in this very interesting era-in what I believe is still close to the dawn of human history, yet a time of great abundance compared to what has gone before in past centuries.

Gratitude is a surprisingly powerful force in our souls-powerful enough to badly contradict simple economic models filled with ‘agents