"And to return to Alex Honnold, perhaps the most important lesson a free-market loving economist should draw is that sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money."

My dad likes to visit the same coffee shop every morning, where he sees more or less the same people. He likes to show his friends pictures of his son on big routes in Yosemite or the Andes, preferring the ones with dangling-portaledge or freezing thousand-yard-stare shock value. They almost invariably ask, "does he get paid for this?" I ask him how he restrains himself from asking, "have you ever done anything for fun?"