Unhappy Development

by Don Boudreaux on November 13, 2007

I sent this letter yesterday to the New York Times:

Here’s the scariest line
I’ve read in ages: "The era of laissez-faire happiness might be coming
to an end. Some prominent economists and psychologists are looking
into ways to measure happiness to draw it into the public policy realm"
("All They Are Saying Is Give Happiness a Chance," November 12).

Several
decades ago, many economists – enamored of their increasing ability to
describe statistically existing patterns of production – fancied that a
new age was dawning in which government would improve the lot of
ordinary people by substituting its own production and distribution
"plans" for the results of the market. These fancies proved to be
dangerous fantasies. We would all be much better off – happier, even!
- if this new generation of planners are laughed out of the public
arena before their power grows to be as large as their gargantuan
arrogance.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

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Mesa Econoguy

I found this editorial appalling.

The New York Times is distasteful for publishing it.

Disgusting., despicable, and entirely expected.

John Pertz

Let me get this straight. The left wing feels that it is perfectly sane for the government to play god and change global weather patterns. And once they get done with that small task they can get on with the business of making all of us happier. This is the same outfit that can not deliver mail efficiently, yet we should feel so obliged to have them change the weather and make our lives happy?

DCPI

The only time I am truly happy is when I am being an unhappy malcontent. Suck on that paradox psychologists, computers and other experts.

SaulOhio

This reminds me of a science fiction story I once heard about (but didn't get to read) about a future dystopian society in which a computer has taken over the government with the aim of making people happy. People found they had to try to fake being happy or end up being treated as criminals.

Its insane to think government can make people happy, because happiness is a matter of individual choice and achievement.

G

We can argue all day about happiness, but one thing is very clear: Sick and injured people aren't happy. There is just no two ways about it, living in chronic pain or undergoing chemotherapy does not make anyone happy. The same goes for surgery without anesthesia.

Sadly, government-run health care systems haven't achieved the same equality of outcomes as have been reached by other (mostly) free-market industries, such as automobiles and computers.

That is a bit odd, isn't it? That the free market, which places no emphasis on equality of outcomes whatsoever, has leveled the playing field in so many industries (lets face it, a Porsche is no better, and may even be worse, than a Kia at getting from point A to point B).

Gelbs

Well put. As Arnold Kling once put it, the whole "we're getting richer, not happier" argument is nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse for the left to tax the rich and create a more egalitarian society.

Check out my blog - I posted on the same article!

www.denison-decanter.blogspot.com
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Al Abbott

Right on. Happiness is an emotional state that arises from earning the values one needs. Earning! Government is totally impotent in this regard and the specter of nanny government attempting to instill proper or officially decreed emotional states is literally obscene and horrific.

cpurick

D. Boudreaux:

Here's the scariest line I've read in ages

Line, my ass. That's got to be the scariest editorial ever written.

Implicit in unhappiness, as defined by the Times, is the envy we feel toward those who have more than we do (with an interesting implication that the wealth must be making them happy).

Then an outright call for taxes to make us all stop busting our humps at work because we're apparently too stupid to recognize the futility of the rat race.

Dude, I won't be happy till I have a 6-Series, and your plans are threatening my happiness!

Those morons actually think we'll all be happier when we finally rid ourselves of this notion that we can somehow affect our own happiness.

My God, liberals just. Don't. "Get it."