A recent article addressed the issue of children being frightened of costumed characters and some of the other fears they might experience.  In some cases, this fear escalated into a phobia.

However, comments like "fears likely helped our ancestors survive" generate more alarm than comfort to me. Besides being pretty obvious, it raises the question of why fear should be considered such a bad thing, especially for children.

I can certainly understand that an unreasonable fear that has escalated all of out proportion and become debilitating can be problematic. I suspect that the vast majority of fears and phobias don't actually fall into that category.

In looking at the concept of a ghost, the first problem one encounters is defining exactly what is meant by such an apparition.  It seems that the general view over history is that ghosts represent some aspect of a once living individual that may have occasion to make itself known.  This is generally considered to be a soul, or some animating spirit, so for our purposes that loose definition will do.

I won't consider the problems of why such an entity would be geographically confined, or even what such a thing means.  Instead let's consider what it takes for a ghost to engage in a haunting.

If the question were asked, what is the primary purpose of business, the most likely response would be "to make money".  However, this is an unsatisfactory answer since it clearly doesn't provide sufficient justification for businesses to exist.  There is no question that we all need and use money in our daily lives, but similarly this would be an unsatisfactory answer to justify why we work.

If we considered economics from the barter perspective, the answer of "making money" would seem peculiar because we could only loosely translate it as "wanting stuff".  Clearly if we were bartering for goods and services there would be more specific items that we want and need, but also what is our personal motivation in such a scenario?