Comments on: Economics of Mozart and Happiness

By: CTD

CTD — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 00:14:57 +0000

If more stuff won’t make people happy – maybe statist attempts to interfere in the economy (protectionism, redistribution of wealth) at the cost of freedom are wholly ill-advised?

By: Tom West

Tom West — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 09:48:39 +0000

Perhaps I’ve read too many evo-bio books, but it seems very likely that we’re programmed to want to acquire things (thus improving our survival). Once we’ve acquired it, there’s no reason for biology to have it continue to make us happy. The trap is that being relatively poorer than our neighbours does make us unhappy, and can even endanger our health. Poverty is relative but very real. Those who live substantially less well than their peers almost always have poorer health and are more victimized by crime than those who lived at a similar level years ago. i.e. You’ve got to keep up your consumption or suffer the consequences of poverty. To be honest, I can’t see any way out of it.

By: George Stewart

George Stewart — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 09:44:29 +0000

It kind of makes you happy, for a wee while; but if you hang too much of your happiness on the getting of external things, then you are to a certain extent not really free inside yourself, not independent. There’s a stronger, more abiding kind of happiness to be had from being internally independent of the getting and having of things. Some people can be happy with a minimum of stuff, like monks, hermits, etc. and While most of us aren’t drawn to that kind of minimalist life, it’s worth having a bit of that kind of independence of things in one’s own life. Put it this way, I wouldn’t want to not have any stuff, or live in a society where stuff isn’t as abundant as it is in our society. But when I check myself, and if I find myself getting really upset when I can’t have a certain thing, then I know I’m “caught”, trapped in a subtle way. Get the stuff, have it, enjoy it, but at the same time be internally free of it, be able to drop it with a laugh.

By: chris

chris — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:44:53 +0000

The question is, where does stuff start (or stop)? Living in a stone house with insulated floors definitely makes me happier than living in an iron age roundhouse. Taking a shower make me happier than freezing my arse off in a hip bath. Central heating makes me ecstatic when I think about hauling coals morning and night. But a lot of other stuff, agreed, serves no purpose other than to frighten me every time I look at a bank statement. I’ve got rid of some of it. I should probably get rid of a lot more. But where’s the line?

By: drapetomaniac

drapetomaniac — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 00:00:10 +0000

stuff makes me happy. what makes you think stuff doesn’t make people happy?

By: George Stewart

George Stewart — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 22:13:54 +0000

Gotama Siddhartha had a better answer than Marx et. al. to Matt’s version of the progress paradox centuries ago. We think having stuff will make us happy (that’s why we make, sell and buy it); but it doesn’t. But we’d think it made us happy no matter what economic system we lived in. All that’s happened in the economic system we do live in is we’re able to produce more stuff more and more cheaply. The resolution of all this is that it’s actually ok having stuff, so long as you don’t think it’ll make you happy. :-)

By: GMT

GMT — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 19:23:24 +0000

< i> how do we come to have all this stuff ? Because you’ve been had.