The Happiness PhD Project (Encyclopedia)

Over the last few years credit cards have gone from swipe – to chip – to touch.

And I have to wonder. Does anyone actually give a shit? Did anyone ask for this? It got me thinking about how our economy allocates resources.

And perhaps, perhaps, there are times that the market doesn’t do the best job of allocating resources to maximize happiness.

In the swipe to chip to touch case, think of the amount of intellectual resources and money that went into this revolutionary innovation (revolutionary in the same way automated trash can lids are). I bet our financial institutions spent a few billion dollars on this. On top of that, we took thousands of the most brilliant human minds and had them dedicate several million (give or take) hours to this.

So as a species, as a society, we decided to invest some billion dollars and million hours of our best minds to go from swipe to chip to touch.

I don’t think it’s that radical to say that maybe, this wasn’t the best use of resources. Hell I’m not even saying we should have given that money to the poor or tried to cure malaria. We could have built a bunch of water parks for all I care. Just about anything could have made us happier.

Before you write me off as some bong-ripping hippie or neo-Marxist, know that I support capitalism and the free market.

But I’d like to propose that we could do a tad better when it comes to happiness. I know that nowadays to even suggest the status quo isn’t perfect is enough to have you lampooned as communist, socialist, or whatever other –ist the political pundits can pull out of their asses.

But as someone who holds dual degrees in Economics and Happiness Studies, I believe that we can have a capitalism that makes us all a whole lot happier. That’s what this essay calls for.

I present two questions: Why focus on economics? And – What are we optimizing for? Then I suggest some areas of improvement for a happier capitalism that I think most folks can agree on. That don’t involve over-regulation (or hippie communes and communist revolutions).

Why economics?

My freshman year of college I took microeconomics with a world-renown behavioral economist.

The textbook for the course was Economics is Everywhere. I, like any other sane college freshman, never read the textbook. But I got the gist – it was full of everyday examples of economics lessons. Why do gas prices change? Why is college so damn expensive? Why is social media so addictive?

Almost everything can be explained by economic forces… Economics is everywhere.

In practice, the “economic” system is really an amalgamation of social, cultural, political, and economic forces. I call this our ideological consensus. It’s basically the rules of the game for society. Murder is not allowed. Starting companies is allowed. Selling dangerous stuff is sometimes allowed (depending on who you know and how much influence you have over the government). And so on.

If we are fish, then our socio-economic-political consensus is the ocean we swim in.

Over time the economic part of this mixture has taken on greater influence than the others. The economic ideals of free market, competition, and growth now color the conversations around culture, politics, and even social life. In many ways it seems that capitalism – what was once a purely economic construct – is now the source of all norms and cultural values.

If you’re willing to examine your everyday life and expectations, you’ll find that our economic system is the source of just about everything. Why do you get up and go to work M-F? Why do you have a mortgage and bills to pay? Why is it a bad idea to give away all your money? Why is stealing not allowed?