Tapsearch Com EditorEnvironmentalism, happiness, genetics and wages...oh my
March 9th 2007 02:32
This Mother Jones article by Bill Mckibben is really quite something. It argues that capitalism is (A) using up our resources and (B) not making us any happier, so (C) we should return to a more small community-based way of life. It's long, but I recommend reading the whole thing.
It's certainly true that all resources are scarce to some degree, but I think the writer underestimates humanity's ability to overcome problems:
"The doctrinaire economist's answer is that no particular commodity matters all that much, because if we run short of something, it will pay for someone to develop a substitute. In general this has proved true in the past: Run short of nice big sawlogs and someone invents plywood. But it's far from clear that the same precept applies to coal, oil, and natural gas. This time, there is no easy substitute: I like the solar panels on my roof, but they're collecting diffuse daily energy, not using up eons of accumulated power. Fossil fuel was an exception to the rule, a one-time gift that underwrote a one-time binge of growth."
It's true this is a difficult problem. Eventually, we'll have to move away from fossil fuels -- a costly process that will slow growth. But we'll find other sources of energy (like nuclear power), and it's doubtful we'll send ourselves back to the stone age doing so. Before the fossil fuel era, people thought that was unlikely.
Then, he turns to happiness, arguing that once a society passes $10,000 per capita, income no longer predicts the country's average self-described happiness. It seems that once the economy meets basic needs, other things like culture, family, etc. determine happiness.
On America:
"Throughout the postwar years, even as the gnp curve has steadily climbed, the 'life satisfaction' index has stayed exactly the same. Since 1972, the National Opinion Research Center has surveyed Americans on the question: 'Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?' (This must be a somewhat unsettling interview.) The 'very happy' number peaked at 38 percent in the 1974 poll, amid oil shock and economic malaise; it now hovers right around 33 percent."
This is true between groups of people -- countries can get richer without getting happier, and there are some poor countries where people are quite happy -- but within most any group, rich people rate themselves as happier. In short, status within a society matters regardless of the society as a whole's material wealth. The writer doesn't mention that latter part.
Overall the argument stands, however, that further economic growth almost certainly won't make people consider themselves any happier. My point is this: Even if today's Americans don't rate themselves happier than their parents did, they still have more free time, more money, etc. If you put a modern American 30-year-old next to a 30-year-old from 1950, and they compared their lives, both would probably conclude the modern American has it easy. The line "you don't realize how good you've got it" is absolutely true. But not appreciating this is not the same as having it bad.
The writer makes a few good counterarguments here. For one, if we're not going to appreciate how convenient our lives are, why stretch resources toward that end? Also, 30-year-olds from the '50s did have it better in that family and community meant more back then.
In a way, the article makes a very socially conservative point, one that Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein made in The Bell Curve, and one that Steve Sailer recently made in The American Conservative: America's sense of community is dying. It's important to resurrect it. One needn't buy Mother Jones's environmental alarmism to agree with that.
Finally, I thought this was interesting:
"[Neuroscientist] Whybrow argues that many of us in this country are predisposed to a kind of dynamic individualism -- our gene pool includes an inordinate number of people who risked everything to start over."
Is there any evidence on this derived from actual genetic research, or is it Darwinian speculation? And if it is true, does it lend any credence to Sam Francis's controversial remark "The civilization that we . . . created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people."
I took out the words "as whites," and of course this changes the meaning drastically, but was Francis right that there's a genetic component to adjusting well to a democratic society? And what would this mean for immigration policy?
An aside -- it's rather funny the article works in some nonsense about "real wages" declining. If wages declined, and Americans don't rate themselves happier than their parents, wouldn't that suggest a lack of financial wellbeing contributed to the misery? The claim, of course, is bunk; "real wage" measurements overstate inflation and do not consider consumption.
It's certainly true that all resources are scarce to some degree, but I think the writer underestimates humanity's ability to overcome problems:
"The doctrinaire economist's answer is that no particular commodity matters all that much, because if we run short of something, it will pay for someone to develop a substitute. In general this has proved true in the past: Run short of nice big sawlogs and someone invents plywood. But it's far from clear that the same precept applies to coal, oil, and natural gas. This time, there is no easy substitute: I like the solar panels on my roof, but they're collecting diffuse daily energy, not using up eons of accumulated power. Fossil fuel was an exception to the rule, a one-time gift that underwrote a one-time binge of growth."
It's true this is a difficult problem. Eventually, we'll have to move away from fossil fuels -- a costly process that will slow growth. But we'll find other sources of energy (like nuclear power), and it's doubtful we'll send ourselves back to the stone age doing so. Before the fossil fuel era, people thought that was unlikely.
Then, he turns to happiness, arguing that once a society passes $10,000 per capita, income no longer predicts the country's average self-described happiness. It seems that once the economy meets basic needs, other things like culture, family, etc. determine happiness.
On America:
"Throughout the postwar years, even as the gnp curve has steadily climbed, the 'life satisfaction' index has stayed exactly the same. Since 1972, the National Opinion Research Center has surveyed Americans on the question: 'Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?' (This must be a somewhat unsettling interview.) The 'very happy' number peaked at 38 percent in the 1974 poll, amid oil shock and economic malaise; it now hovers right around 33 percent."
This is true between groups of people -- countries can get richer without getting happier, and there are some poor countries where people are quite happy -- but within most any group, rich people rate themselves as happier. In short, status within a society matters regardless of the society as a whole's material wealth. The writer doesn't mention that latter part.
Overall the argument stands, however, that further economic growth almost certainly won't make people consider themselves any happier. My point is this: Even if today's Americans don't rate themselves happier than their parents did, they still have more free time, more money, etc. If you put a modern American 30-year-old next to a 30-year-old from 1950, and they compared their lives, both would probably conclude the modern American has it easy. The line "you don't realize how good you've got it" is absolutely true. But not appreciating this is not the same as having it bad.
The writer makes a few good counterarguments here. For one, if we're not going to appreciate how convenient our lives are, why stretch resources toward that end? Also, 30-year-olds from the '50s did have it better in that family and community meant more back then.
In a way, the article makes a very socially conservative point, one that Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein made in The Bell Curve, and one that Steve Sailer recently made in The American Conservative: America's sense of community is dying. It's important to resurrect it. One needn't buy Mother Jones's environmental alarmism to agree with that.
Finally, I thought this was interesting:
"[Neuroscientist] Whybrow argues that many of us in this country are predisposed to a kind of dynamic individualism -- our gene pool includes an inordinate number of people who risked everything to start over."
Is there any evidence on this derived from actual genetic research, or is it Darwinian speculation? And if it is true, does it lend any credence to Sam Francis's controversial remark "The civilization that we . . . created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people."
I took out the words "as whites," and of course this changes the meaning drastically, but was Francis right that there's a genetic component to adjusting well to a democratic society? And what would this mean for immigration policy?
An aside -- it's rather funny the article works in some nonsense about "real wages" declining. If wages declined, and Americans don't rate themselves happier than their parents, wouldn't that suggest a lack of financial wellbeing contributed to the misery? The claim, of course, is bunk; "real wage" measurements overstate inflation and do not consider consumption.
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