On Greenwich's liveliest and most decorated street, one house was dark on Halloween. Cars slowed to a crawl against the mass of trick-or-treaters and their parents enjoying the bright lights, spooky noises and buckets upon buckets of candy, but nobody turned into the single undecorated house, where every last light was off. It wasn't an abandoned or a haunted house; it was the rabbi's house.

Halloween has its centuries-old roots in pre-Christian Celtic traditions as a day on the verge between our world and the underworld. Obviously, it is not a Jewish holiday. It is not a Christian one either. Some churches have opposed it for its emphasis on the supernatural while others have embraced it, but it remains primarily a secular holiday.

The holiday is fun but it doesn't really make sense. The candy at other people's houses seems to come from the exact same Costco bag we had emptied into a bowl on our porch for others to take. What is the point of everybody buying candy they don't really want, giving it away to others and then taking other people's leftovers?

It also seems a little silly to have an annual autumn tradition in which we get dressed, go to a predesignated spot, enter a dark room and shuffle bits of property from one group of people to another, with just about everybody getting something, and just about everybody giving something up and nobody getting what they really want.

Yes, you guessed it, I'm now talking about voting.

Every year we vote for local officials, every two years for a congressional representative, every four for a president and a governor and every six for a senator. We go to our local polling place and hang out behind a curtain for a few minutes figuring out which choice is less bad.

Inevitably we are disappointed. Just as it would have been easier and cheaper to buy the exact candy you wanted (or fruit or cake or burger) rather than try to buy what you thought would satisfy others and then search for something to satisfy you from their equally banal remnants, so it would have been easier to just keep your money and help your relatives directly rather than get taxed and apply for government help for health care and a nursing home and retirement benefits.

This brings us back to the rabbi and his dark house. I happen to like trick-or-treating, but I like that there are people that don't do it. That keeps it truly voluntary and maintains hope that there might be something better. Those who refuse to participate in Halloween make us remember that we don't have to mindlessly follow the pack.

I also like that there are some people who don't vote. They help remind us that we don't have to do what the politicians want us to think is our duty, namely, legitimizing their jobs. In fact, most people don't vote most of the time and probably most people don't celebrate Halloween, but you wouldn't know either fact from casual observation or media reports: People staying home does not makes news.

But it is inspiring. I am grateful to the dark libertarian houses every November that refuse to legitimize the political shell game.

Halloween is just a few hours; taxes are eternal. On Halloween, you can close your door and turn off your lights any year you want to. But what would happen if taxpayers went on strike?

If one person does it, such as senatorial candidate Peter Schiff's father Irwin, he gets imprisoned for 13 years, to be released when he is 88. But what if everybody's house was dark? Would the government really imprison or execute millions of Americans who just want to buy and eat their own candy for a change?

Dr. Phil Maymin is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.