Every year, Americans are asked which Halloween candy they like least, and every year, candy corn wins. Every year, Americans then buy more candy corn than almost any other candy, and this year is no different: sales data out this week shows the little yellow-white-orange triangles near the top of the charts while survey after survey names them the nation’s least-loved treat.

This is not confusion. This is a tradition. Nobody eats candy corn. Nobody stops buying it. The candy exists in a state of pure civic ritual, like the pledge of allegiance or the glovebox full of jumper cables.

“I hate candy corn with my whole chest,” said Marguerite Okafor, who was at a checkout counter in Columbus with three king-size bags of it in her cart. “These are for the porch. The porch is not for me. The porch is for the neighborhood, and the neighborhood and I have an understanding: I give them the candy I would never eat, and they never come to my door asking questions.”

That is the whole economy, said Dr. Alan Petrosky, an economist who studies snack aisles and did not laugh when asked about this. “Candy corn is a Pareto-optimal candy,” he said. “It costs almost nothing, it lasts forever, and it is universally declined in a way that is itself pleasurable. Handing a kid candy corn is a tiny, safe social transaction. Everyone wins by not winning.”

The industry, for its part, treats the annual hatred as weather. Candy analysts note the contradiction without embarrassment: the candy is despised in surveys and moves by the ton in stores, a pattern so reliable it has its own shelf. This year the fun-size bag costs more than last year — everything does — and the candy corn price held, because candy corn is the one part of the American economy still operating on principle.

The taste, briefly, for the record, since we are a paper of record: wax, then sugar, then wax again, then a sweetness that arrives late and leaves early, like a neighbor who came over to talk about his roof. Dentists describe it as “sticky in a way that suggests intent.” Children describe it not at all, because children eat it without comment, which is the only honest relationship anyone has with candy corn.

By October 31, every porch in America will hold a bowl of it. By November 1, the bowls will be half full, as they always are, and no one will throw them away, because no one throws anything away in a house that buys candy corn.