MANIFESTO FOR HAPPINESS. Shifting society from money to well-being

270 Pages·2019·3.197 MB·English

by  Stefano Bartolini

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3/16/2018

Stefano Bartolini

MANIFESTO FOR HAPPINESS
Shifting society from money to well-being
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CONTENTS

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Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................. 9
PART ONE: The manifesto in brief ............................................................................................. 14
Chapter 2 - The disease ............................................................................................................. 14
1. The symptoms: unhappiness and haste ................................................................................ 14
2. The disease: the decline of relations ..................................................................................... 14
3. Defensive growth ................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter 3 - The causes of the disease: the change in values ....................................................... 19
1. Materialism and relations ...................................................................................................... 19
2. The market economy promotes materialism ........................................................................ 20
3. The media promote materialism ........................................................................................... 22
4. At the root of the problem: the life of children ..................................................................... 23
5. Crushing the sense of possibility ............................................................................................ 24
6. Lives and societies adrift ........................................................................................................ 25
7. Urban life ................................................................................................................................ 26
8. American urban sprawl .......................................................................................................... 28
9. The summer of 2007: the implosion of defensive capitalism ................................................ 29
Chapter 4 - Cures: relational policies ......................................................................................... 31
1. Change our cities .................................................................................................................... 31
2. Change urban space ............................................................................................................... 32
3. Reduce traffic ......................................................................................................................... 32
4. Change our schools ................................................................................................................ 33
5. Reduce advertising ................................................................................................................. 35
6. Change democracy ................................................................................................................. 36
7. Change the work experience ................................................................................................. 37
8. Less stressed and less performing? ....................................................................................... 39
9. Change healthcare ................................................................................................................. 40
10. Conclusion: State, market, relations .................................................................................... 41
11. Some objections ................................................................................................................... 44
11.1. A relational society is utopian ....................................................................................... 44
11.2. A relational society creates unemployment ................................................................. 45
PART TWO. America the example not to follow ........................................................................ 47
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Chapter 5 - Why Americans are increasingly unhappy and overworked .................................... 47
1. Basic concepts and measures ................................................................................................ 47
1.1. Measures of happiness ................................................................................................... 47
1.2. Measures of growth ........................................................................................................ 48
2. Americans have become less happy ...................................................................................... 49
2.1 Subjective well-being ....................................................................................................... 49
2.2. Objective well-being ....................................................................................................... 49
3. Americans have become overworked ................................................................................... 51
4. Why do Americans strive so much for money if it does not buy them happiness? .............. 52
5. Happiness and relational poverty .......................................................................................... 53
6. Work and relational poverty .................................................................................................. 57
Box: The Easterlin paradox debate ............................................................................................ 58
Box: The myth of flat trends of subjective well-being ............................................................... 60
Box: Genetic happiness .............................................................................................................. 61
Chapter 6 - Defensive growth ................................................................................................... 63
1. Economic growth and relational poverty. ............................................................................. 63
2. The schizophrenia of growth. ................................................................................................ 65
Box for economists: the key equations of defensive growth. ................................................... 66
3. Envying alone ......................................................................................................................... 68
4. Mass examples of envy and solitude: China, India and the United States ............................ 70
5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 71
Box: Happiness is more evenly distributed in socially richer countries .................................... 72
Chapter 7. Loneliness, fear and ill-being as drivers of American growth .................................... 74
1. The rise of transaction costs .................................................................................................. 74
2. The industry of fear: security and social control ................................................................... 75
3. The industry of economic segregation: urban sprawl ........................................................... 76
4. The industry of malaise: healthcare ...................................................................................... 77
Box. Troubled lives, troubled health: mass examples from the U.S. ......................................... 79
5. Comparing the US and Europe ............................................................................................... 81
5.1 Economic growth and working hours. ............................................................................. 81
5.2 Relational goods and happiness ...................................................................................... 84
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5.3 Defensive growth, Europe, the United States ................................................................. 86
Appendix to chapter 6................................................................................................................ 87
PART THREE. What affects the quality of relationships? ............................................................ 93
Chapter 8 - Markets, values, relations....................................................................................... 94
1. The marketability of goods .................................................................................................... 94
2. Changing values ..................................................................................................................... 95
3. Materialism and relational poverty ....................................................................................... 97
Box. How to measure materialism ............................................................................................. 99
4. Why does materialism erode relations? ................................................................................ 99
5. Crowding out of motivations ............................................................................................... 100
6. Why do market relations spread materialism? ................................................................... 101
7. Does relational poverty generate materialism? .................................................................. 102
8. Materialism and relationship with oneself .......................................................................... 103
9. Materialism in Europe .......................................................................................................... 104
Chapter 9 - The media as factory of desires............................................................................. 105
1. The intensification of competitive spending ....................................................................... 105
2. Media and marketing ........................................................................................................... 105
3. New frontiers ....................................................................................................................... 107
4. Digital advertising ................................................................................................................ 108
5. Neuromarketing ................................................................................................................... 109
Box: Neuropolitics .................................................................................................................... 112
Box: The impossible commercial ............................................................................................. 113
Chapter 10 - Born to buy? ....................................................................................................... 115
1. The ills young people ........................................................................................................... 115
2. Wrong explanations for youthful distress ........................................................................... 116
3. The relational distress of youngsters ................................................................................... 117
4. Competitive and media pressure ......................................................................................... 118
5. Materialism and young people ............................................................................................ 119
6. Advertising targeting kids .................................................................................................... 121
7. Summary .............................................................................................................................. 123
Chapter 11 - Born to work?..................................................................................................... 125
1. Adult-youth conflicts, ungovernable lives and social systems ............................................ 125
2. The sense of possibility. ....................................................................................................... 127
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3. The culture of time. .............................................................................................................. 128
Chapter 12 - What kind of animal are we? .............................................................................. 131
1. Homo economicus is a fake .................................................................................................. 131
2. Humans: a cooperative species ........................................................................................... 132
3. Between- versus within-group selection ............................................................................. 134
4. The dismal science begins to smile: the social function of a scientific lie ........................... 136
PART FOUR: Policies for happiness ......................................................................................... 137
Chapter 13 - Urban policy: the relational city .......................................................................... 138
1. The modern city ................................................................................................................... 138
Box: New Urbanism: the shortcomings of car-dependence .................................................... 140
2. Space in a relational city ...................................................................................................... 141
3. Transport in a relational city ................................................................................................ 143
Chapter 14 - Policies for children and adolescents .................................................................. 145
1. The schooling system is flawed ............................................................................................ 146
1.1. Cognition vs. emotions.................................................................................................. 146
1.2. Extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivations .................................................................................. 146
1.3. Competition vs. cooperation ........................................................................................ 147
Box: Japanese hyper-competition ........................................................................................... 148
1.4. Effective vs. affective .................................................................................................... 148
1.5. Academic achievement vs. well-being .......................................................................... 150
2. Humanizing schools ............................................................................................................. 150
3. Pressure for change ............................................................................................................. 151
4. Change the school system ................................................................................................... 152
3.1 Participatory teaching .................................................................................................... 153
3.2 Social and emotional learning ........................................................................................ 153
3.3. Alternative schooling .................................................................................................... 154
5. Culture of performance and learning society ...................................................................... 155
6. What can parents do? .......................................................................................................... 157
7. The strain of parenting. ........................................................................................................ 157
Box: They are the problem ...................................................................................................... 159
Chapter 15. Policies for advertising ......................................................................................... 161
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1. Proposals for regulation ....................................................................................................... 161
2. Counter-arguments .............................................................................................................. 163
3. Consumption as child autonomy ......................................................................................... 164
4. Advertising enables free television, better products, growth and employment. ............... 164
5. The parents’ fault ................................................................................................................. 166
Chapter 16 - Change democracy ............................................................................................. 168
1. Post-democracy: the democracy of 1% ............................................................................... 168
2. Politics for sale ..................................................................................................................... 169
3. How to reform post-democracy. ......................................................................................... 170
Box: E-politics ....................................................................................................................... 172
4. Post-democracy and globalization. ...................................................................................... 173
PART FIVE. Policies for healthcare .......................................................................................... 175
Healthcare spending out of control? ....................................................................................... 175
Chapter 18. Happiness as disease prevention ......................................................................... 178
1. The medicalisation of health ................................................................................................ 178
2. Is health improving? ............................................................................................................. 178
3. How to improve health? ...................................................................................................... 179
4. Happiness and health ........................................................................................................... 180
Box: Why does well-being influence health? ........................................................................... 183
Box: Happiness and longevity: the nuns’ study ....................................................................... 183
5. The social cure...................................................................................................................... 183
Box: Research on entire lives ................................................................................................... 186
Box: Daily effects of relationships on health ........................................................................... 187
6. Preventive happiness ........................................................................................................... 187
7. From curing the illness to caring for the ill .......................................................................... 189
8. Defensive medicine .............................................................................................................. 191
Box: Cuban relational healthcare ............................................................................................. 193
9. Medical knowledge .............................................................................................................. 194
Chapter 19. Manipulation of medical knowledge .................................................................... 197
1. The medicated society ......................................................................................................... 197
2. The invention of illness ........................................................................................................ 197
Box: Pharmaceutical marketing ............................................................................................... 199
3. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment ....................................................................................... 200
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Box. Early diagnosis of cancer .................................................................................................. 203
4. Manipulated research: Trial and Terror ............................................................................... 204
4.1. Ex-ante distortions in research ..................................................................................... 204
4.2. Ex-post distortions in research ..................................................................................... 205
Box: Bird flu! Help! ................................................................................................................... 205
4.3. Ghost writing ................................................................................................................. 205
5. A research-based industry? ................................................................................................. 206
7. For-profit medicine .............................................................................................................. 209
8. Medical knowledge as marketing ........................................................................................ 210
9. How to improve medical knowledge ................................................................................... 212
Chapter 20. Conclusion: Healthcare as defensive expenditure ................................................. 215
1. Reducing healthcare demand through policies for relationships and medical knowledge 215
Box. When medical lies meet distress: opioids in the US ........................................................ 218
PART SIX: Epilogue: the Great Recession ................................................................................. 221
Chapter 21 - Prologue: the formidable American consumer .................................................... 221
1. The American consumer’s bulimia ....................................................................................... 222
2. The American consumer’s formidable debt ........................................................................ 224
3. Other explanations for the debt: wealth illusion, easy credit, increasing inequality .......... 225
Chapter 22 - Epilogue: the implosion of defensive growth....................................................... 228
1. The world-financed American consumption ....................................................................... 228
2. Exporting the crisis: the credit crunch ................................................................................. 230
3. Setting the fox to guard the henhouse ................................................................................ 231
4. Summary and conclusion: the desert behind and the abyss ahead .................................... 232
PART SEVEN: And now the good news: the relational society is possible ................................. 234
Chapter 24 - The 20th century is over ...................................................................................... 234
1. Our culture is changing ........................................................................................................ 234
2. Why the 20th century is over ................................................................................................ 235
3. America: from de Tocqueville to Katrina ............................................................................. 237
4. “Does economic growth improve the human lot?” is the wrong question ......................... 238
5. Post-growth .......................................................................................................................... 239
6. Where are we now? ............................................................................................................. 241
6. 1. The bad news ............................................................................................................... 242
6.2. The good news .............................................................................................................. 245
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References.................................................................................................................................... 248

Forthcoming chapters

PART FOUR: Policies for happiness

Chapter 17. How to change the work experience
1. The persistence of the biblical curse of toil
2. Work satisfaction and intrinsic motivations
3. What should we do?
4. Happier but less productive?
5. The limits of incentives
6. Do fewer incentives mean less productivity?
7. Capitalism and intrinsic motivations

PART SEVEN: And now the good news: the relational society is possible
Chapter 23. Pieces of a feasible reality
1. Utopia or reality?
2. The possible firm
3. Happy cities
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Chapter 1 - Introduction

The discovery of reliable and low-cost methods of measuring happiness in recent decades has
stimulated intense debate involving all branches of the social sciences, and has also attracted the
interest of the media. Measures of happiness are now available for a great number of countries and
in some cases cover long historical periods since the end of WWII. Whether subjective (concerning
the well-being perceived by individuals) or objective (concerning suicides, alcoholism, drug abuse,
mental illness, use of tranquilizers and antidepressants, etc.), they tell a troubling story: happiness
in Western societies since WWII has not improved to any great degree. Despite the enormous
increase in access to consumer goods in the past 50 years, Westerners do not seem happier. In
shortde, the data suggest that money does not buy happiness.
This solid evidence comes as no surprise to the advertising world. A celebrated member of this
profession, Frederic Beigbeder, wrote: “I am an ad-man. Making you drool is my mission. In my line
of work no one wants your happiness, because happy people do not consume”.
However, if we look beyond advertising, for Western culture the lack of a positive correlation
between happiness and access to consumer goods is such a great surprise that it earned the title of
“happiness paradox”. To have an idea of how much the concept of poverty is associated with
unhappiness in our culture, one need only think of the fact that all Western languages define Mr.
Smith as poor if he loses his wife or if he falls seriously ill or dies, even if he always lived in ease and
comfort. In other words, poverty is the symbol of all ills to such an extent that people are called
“poor” even if their troubles have nothing to do with material poverty!
The happiness paradox is therefore disquieting to western culture: with all our achievements in such
fields as economic prosperity, political freedom, educational, hygiene, health standards,
technological progress and life expectancy, how is it possible that people do not feel better? Have
we worked so hard to create a better world only to discover that it was full of suffering? This paradox
threatens a cornerstone of modern culture, namely that economic growth is a plausible means for
improving the perception that people have of their lives. Indeed, economic prosperity is the major
aspiration of nations, communities and individuals, and growth is considered the main sign of
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progress of a country. In our collective imagination, economic progress means being able to buy
more things.
By analyzing the impact of growth on well-being in Western countries, happiness studies assess the
desirability of an experiment of historical importance for humanity. In fact, the West experienced
the only accomplished liberation from mass poverty in history. The assessment of well-being that
this experience produced is of extraordinary importance, since this is the experience to which
everyone aspires, in the belief that it will help them live better.
However, people do not seem to feel better when they have access to more money. The happiness
paradox contradicts the income – well-being equation, raising questions that are at the forefront of
public debate. The media give much space to this issue. For example, the “Financial Times” has
published many articles, including an editorial entitled Were hippies right? The “Economist” went
so far as to dedicate the front cover of several special issues to happiness studies. Faced with the
happiness paradox, the magazine defended existing economic organization by claiming that the
historical task of capitalism is to expand access to consumer goods and not to make people happier.
It is paradoxical that this thesis is advanced by advocates of the current economic order and reveals
their discomfort. Indeed, economists teach the following concept in introductory courses in
microeconomics: having more money is not an end, it is a means for living better.

This book is an inquiry into the causes of present-day unhappiness and its solutions. The thesis is
that the crux of the problem is relational. Western societies show a long-term decreasing trend in
the quality of people’s relational experience. The main explanation I propose for the happiness
paradox is that the positive effects on well-being of the improvement in economic conditions have
been off-set by the negative effects of the deterioration of relations between people.
Were we better off when we were worse off? My answer is no. Let me be clear from the start: the
happiness paradox does not mean we should be nostalgic for the rural societies and communities
of yesterday or make a legend of the “good old times”, because they were not good times. Not only
were they not good with respect to the material aspects of life, but also from the point of view of
relations.
It is true that the modern world is full of relational tragedies. The literature of the 1900s records
overwhelming numbers of relational dramas of solitude and non-communication. However,