February 23, 2004

Economics of Mozart and Happiness

Posted by Kieran

Tyler Cowen writes

Read Michael’s recent treatment of The Economics of Mozart. The bottom line? Mozart was a successful commercial entrepreneur. His economic problems stemmed from a war with Turkey, not the failures of the marketplace.

He should definitely have known better than to start a war with Turkey. That whole abduction from the seraglio business was a complete farce. Meanwhile — sorry, I’m not even going to pretend to link these comments — Matt Yglesias makes the following observation about Greg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox:

The real progress paradox isn’t “why doesn’t all our stuff make us happy” but rather, given that all our stuff pretty clearly doesn’t make us happy, how do we come to have all this stuff.

Which seems about right. An unwillingness to distinguish these two questions — or rather, the decision, for technical purposes, to treat them as if they were the same question — is a hallmark of modern economics. Robert E. Lane has a book that argues this point. Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer have a solid rejoinder from the economist’s point of view, arguing that money can indeed go a long way towards making you happy — but not as far, surprisingly, as democratic institutions and local political autonomy can.

Posted on February 23, 2004 07:03 PM UTC
Comments

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

Posted by GMT · February 23, 2004 07:23 PM

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. :-)

Posted by George Stewart · February 23, 2004 10:13 PM

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

Posted by drapetomaniac · February 24, 2004 12:00 AM

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?

Posted by chris · February 24, 2004 07:44 AM

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.

Posted by George Stewart · February 24, 2004 09:44 AM

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.

Posted by Tom West · February 24, 2004 09:48 AM

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?

Posted by CTD · February 27, 2004 12:14 AM
Followups

→ On the Progress Paradox.
Excerpt: Little did I suspect when I linked to Greg Easterbrook's op-ed in the LA Times this morning that a bunch of other folks would be talking it up as well. Kevin Drum essentially says, "Duh. Ya think?" And I found...Read more at Prometheus 6

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.