i do think that thinking about happiness, economic growth, and the state is a fertile ground.

Happiness is overrated.

lobotomies for everyone!

in the land of the lobotomised, who lobotomises the lobotomees?

it's like that barber who shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself

I think it's the guys who got lobotomized by lobotomees who couldn't properly lobotomize their would-be lobotomees

Well, if we could figure out what actually makes people happy (there is a lot of research on this but it certainly isn't settled), then my position would be that the things you wind up rationalizing that don't seem palatable aren't actually important — precisely because we found out that happiness maximized by doing them.

The best argument I know for seeking to do increase of maximize something other than happiness is that we don't know for sure how to do the former, so we can in effect choose some proxy for it. For example, I think many people are using wealth maximization as a proxy — not that they think wealth = happiness (because that would be stupid), but that the things that maximize wealth do at least reasonably well at maximizing happiness. That's reasonable, but my position is that we can do far better, particularly as research is now showing that people care (i.e., their happiness is affected) not just about what they have but also about what others have.

This is completely different from a natural rights-based approach, which isn't a proxy for anything afaic; with that I submit that there just isn't any rational way to decide what rights are fundamental, but again, I get that that's just my position.

See, statements like this make sensible dialog pretty difficult, because either it's a decidedly unhelpful joke or it's an inane assertion. Happiness is, essentially by definition, what is most important, at least as far as anyone who doesn't believe in supernatural stuff is concerned. (Here, supernatural includes but is not limited to religious and quasi-religious concepts of what is right.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/us...ment.html?_r=1

Seems like this guy needs a temp ban

And that correlation is definitely one of the things that we're discovering matters. Except sometimes the correlation is negative. (Usually it's not.)

Other things that may be true of happiness, but cause problems for free marketeers:

• People in fairly poor countries don't seem to be less happy than those in rich ones (once we take out those that are really starving).
• Choice actually doesn't increase happiness. Happiness isn't overrated, but freedom definitely is.
• One of the most important factors affecting a person's happiness is how his life is relative to his expectations. (That may be why people are negatively affected when those around them do better.) Doing as well as you thought you could hope for seems to come pretty close to maximizing happiness.

Combine those things and you get some results than most here will find unpalatable: For example, a bronze age hereditary autoarchy in which most people are born into lifelong slavery actually does fine on the happiness scale as long as everyone is fed and clothed and such and no one is seen as being upwardly or downwardly mobile. You may see this as proof that my set of positions is untenable; I don't.

Heaven forfend someone attempt (pretty badly) to distinguish between knife-to-the-throat rape and I-said-yes-because-I-thought-his-friends-would-laugh-at-me-if-I-didn't rape. Because those are exactly the same thing, and anyone who thinks otherwise hates all women.

I'm just making a pub joke here, but yeah, emphasis on the "pretty badly" part

you mean, like <the US/Europe/insert bugbear of choice>?

Oh, I know, both the joke and the pretty badly (like, amazing a politician in the US would try to get away with that badly) part. I was just trying to get people riled up about something other than wealth distribution.

Speaking of politicians: On Friday we had a fundraiser for a congressional candidate here (my family's estate), with her (the candidate) and a current congresswoman present. Each was very pleasant and personable, so my contention that because they were known to be politicians each was almost one hundred percent to be a self-serving, lying thief was met by most of my family with some skepticism — it's tough to prove if they're going to be sweet and nice and say all the right things (which they did).

I realize it's a bit contradictory that I'm a big government guy yet I think anyone in our or any similar system who seeks or reaches an important office is almost certainly a horrible person and an incompetent decision maker. I never said I had all the answers.

No — the real key here is that in modern western society (say the US, for convenience) we give people the illusion that they can be upwardly mobile. And a few actually achieve it — enough to support the fiction that anyone can, with enough hard work/moral worth/wishing on a star/whatever. So many people come to expect it (hell, how many people bought, read, and actually believe The Secret?) — and then most of those fail. And having failed to achieve what had become their expectations, they are unhappy.

No, 1400s feudalism, I would buy as an approximation, but modern industrial capitalism without income redistribution is almost designed to minimize happiness.

See, people say if you're a slave, but don't expect anything else, you are happy. This is why happiness is overrated.

If it's not that "people say" it but research shows that it's true (this exact hypothesis has not been tested afaik but is consistent with a lot of the data), then what exactly is your problem with it? If they would say they are happy, who are you to say that their happiness is overrated? Would the life of a contented slave be better if he were freed but then, for whatever reason, miserable? In what way would it be better?

It is also crucial, I would think, that people not only achieve their expectations but believe the world to be fair. Thus you would need the slaves not only to be clear that they couldn't do better but to believe that,somehow, that was fair. Pretty tricky, which is another reason I wouldn't propose it. But it's an interesting thought experiment.

Your tax dollars at work: FBI investigates skinnydipping.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news...rael-trip?lite

I would say it's more important to be free than to be a slave, happy or not.

Gawd. Not just the investigation — the rebuke, the apology, the thought of an old flabby guy naked, all of it.

What exactly is the problem — that it was the Sea of Galilee? I don't get it.

Reminds me that my father's wife, who is both quite Democratic and quite catholic (and very far from bright), has several times brought up the trip to wherever it was in Latin America where secret service agents engaged (legal) prostitutes, because she wants to laugh with me at how horrible that was for them to do ... and the conversation doesn't get very far fast my "So?"

I gathered that you were saying that. I'm asking: Why?

oh yeah the rape guy thing seemed odd

if someone claimed a woman was less likely to get pregnant from being raped i wouldn't dismiss it

evolutionarily it seems at least somewhat plausible

how is the whole thing going down irl? or what are the facts?

people are less likely to be happy if they don't have the illusion of freedom

it's all very complicated