Wealth is Relative

[latefordinner]

Alex:

How is that /obviously/ untrue. GDP has grown exponentially for the past 50 years, yet happiness has remained flat.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ec...happecperf.pdf

And you are ignoring lots of things:

for example my perception of living in a just and fair society has an effect on my wellbeing, especially after basic survival needs are met. You may argue that capitalism increses overall wealth, yet that is not likely to matter to me if I perceive that, for example, you are making more money off my labor than I am without doing anything simply because you had the good fortune to inherit a factory, and I had the misfortune to inherit nothing but my labor-power.

another: wellbeing is a state in which I feel my desires are being met. The consumerist phases of capitalism generates profits by creating unfulfilled desires. There are plenty of studies which show, for example, a connection between exposure to ads and dissatisfaction with life.

another: you are all still making the assumption that happiness is a quality that can just keep increasing forever. That in essence, if I lived 500 years ago and said i was "happy" and I lived today and said I'm "happy" that there is some difference betwen the happiness--that really the person today is "happier", yet tons of psychological research has shown this not to be the case and is simply a result of backward projecting ("I don't know how I would ever be happy without the internet")

[bobman0330]

I think there are three related phenomena explaining an individual's feeling of wealth:
1. An objective component. Having an additional cow makes you objectively better off than you were before. Ditto not dying of smallpox and not working in rice fields for 12 hours a day.
2. Your subjective feeling of happiness. There's good reason to believe that people measure happiness on a fixed scale, rather than an unlimited one. So, if you're asked how happy you are, you'll consider your current level of satisfaction compared with how satisfied you could possibly be. If the ratio is very high, then you're happy. If it's low, sad. A corollary is that the same objective level of satisfaction produces less happiness if technology makes greater levels of satisfaction possible.
3. Purely relative element. A third source of happiness is having more than other people. Being the richest guy, the one with the most status, etc., is independently a good thing. Obviously this quantity is zero-sum or close to it.

I think most of those elements are relatively unobjectionable. The more interesting question is what should we do about this. It certainly doesn't directly follow from these principles that some sort of crazy redistribution scheme is called for.

[AlexM]

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Alex:

How is that /obviously/ untrue.

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Read my edits.

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GDP has grown exponentially for the past 50 years, yet happiness has remained flat.

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Using 50 years is like using 500 hands of poker as a sample size. Not only that, but most people can't even measure their own happiness, let alone someone else measuring it for them. How do these measures even work? Maybe a person is happy if they have greater than "50% happiness" and unhappy if they have less than 50%. Maybe those with less than 50% simply have inherently unhappy personalities and we can't really do anything for them while those with above 50% were at average 60% 50 years ago and 80% today, but if you ask them if they're happy, the 60% and 80% answer the same because they're both happy. There are a thousand reasons any kind of happiness comparisons people may have done are unscientific BS.

[TomCollins]

I think this is an excellent point. There are certain advantages in being "the best" at something. I think some people in this thread are overrating that a lot, and a few are underrating. The guy with the most status may get the prettiest girl. Being "better" than someone feels good. Jealousy and envy are key parts to the human condition. However, when you strip that away, let's use the following thought expiriment:

Your neighbors all have to give up half of their stuff. It is all destroyed. Are you better off?

Your neighbors AND you have to give up half of your stuff. It is all destroyed. Are you worse off?

People like Linus who believe wealth is ONLY a relative measure have to say in case 1, you are better off. In case 2, people like Linus CANNOT say they are worse off, even with only half of their stuff. To say either of those things seems quite absurd.

[hmkpoker]

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Is there a happiness machine they walk into that can measure it?

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Happiness machines are awesome.



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FYP [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[pvn]

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Is there a happiness machine they walk into that can measure it?

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Happiness machines are awesome.



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FYP [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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UBV?

[hmkpoker]

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So let me get this straight. You believe that a society of people who live the quality of life equivalent of $1,000 a year, but everyone has the exact same amount, are better off than those where the poorest live the quality of life equivalent of $100,000 but some have billions?

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I believe that the people in the "poor" society are happier than the poor people in the second society, regardless of how much money they have.

And I think it's more or less verifiable.

If you take studies from the 50's, for example, you'll find that people then were no less happy than people today, even though we have far more money.

And I'd wager that an average income worker of the 50's was better off (happier) than poor people today, even though poor people today may have more stuff than the average worker from the fifties.

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What happens if an individual prefers to work a lot, save, and invest, experiencing lots of unhappiness and stress along the way, with the goal of creating more future happiness later on? Any cardinal measurement that doesn't account for the long duration of this man's life would indicate that low time preference, capitalistic behavior generates misery, and that relaxed free time generates happiness, yet it would clearly be illogical to declare capitalism as negative on such grounds.

[AlexM]

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Alex:

How is that /obviously/ untrue.

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The more I think about it, the more I think it's simply obviously untrue to those who don't have extreme issues with envy. If this isn't obviously untrue to you, you probably need to work on these issues. It will make you a much happier person.

[Girchuck]

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The gap by itself is not a huge problem.
The problem is the trend. It appears that the rich are getting richer faster and faster, and the share of total wealth that the top x% controls gets bigger
As long as wealth equals power, the top x% are getting more and more power over the rest. It is this power concetration that bothers many. When more wealth in your neighbors hands translates into more control over you, you fear becoming a slave as the end stage of this trend. This is what drives the argument.

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Interesting. Consider that the modern state is the biggest concentration of power ever seen. And that it is growing.

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I think that is exactly the problem which appears to have no solution. The state will grow unconstrained and the richest people who have the most power within the state will keep accumulating more and more of the total share of wealth and power. What mechanisms do you see that would restrain this growth?

[pvn]

The following quotes are all from Helmut Schoeck's Envy: A Theory Of Social Behavior (1966, tr. 1970)

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To claim "humanitarian motives" when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians today, and has been for at least a hundred and fifty years.

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We envy those whose possessions or achievements are a reflection on our own. They are our neighbors and equals. It is they, above all, who make plain the nature of our failure.

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The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself.

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