Value happiness

by Jon Sullivan - 2024-08-05 - Jonism

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I've spent a lot of time over the last few years meditating on the economics of virtue.

When I was in school I took an economics class where the professor claimed all things were economics. Financial systems, of course, are economics. But she asserted that things like relationships, behavior, and even inaction were subsumed by economic models. Basically, anything that is qualitatively measurable can be understood via economic rules and models. Supply and demand, opportunity cost, economic marginalism, differential analysis, and break-even analysis. I found it fascinating. But not enough to steer me away from engineering to switch to an exciting career as an economist. So while the "everything is economics" theory has always stayed with me, I don't know enough economics to really understand it. So I just sort of make shit up.

For example I've spent a long time thinking about the economics of happiness. Does happiness have economic value? Can it be quantitatively measured? Is happiness transactional? Does happiness have a supply and demand relationship on a personal and/or interpersonal level? I'm still working on the idea, but my current opinion is that happiness is transactional. I have more happiness day to day than I can ever make use of. I'm happier than I need to be. I have a surplus and wish I could donate that extra happiness to others. I accept that as real and make an effort to give my excess away. I feel, outside of Tribe, this fails rather often. Which brings up risk vs reward, differential analysis of action vs inaction. It also brings up currency, and what currency could be used to transfer happiness?

(Tribe is it's own animal, which is why I carve it out of my happiness economic model. Happiness in Tribe is "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Still economic since it's communal. Pun intended. But less transactional since it flows through us and among us. )

I find I can't just give someone happiness. Me just being perky around you won't pay your bills or reduce your back pain. It may annoy you more than anything. But I can give people kindness, and that can fund some amount of happiness. I can invest my kindness in your happiness. So that's my currency.

I pair that with my personal decision to never make kindness transactional. I'll come at you with kindness whether you've earned it or not, and I'll never expect anything in return. If my kindness is ignored I'll have no regrets or judgment. If my kindness is met with derision or treated as weakness I just won't be around you much.

There remains the worrisome question of whether trying to analyze happiness to this degree strays into absurdism and loses any purpose or reason. Or.... If I can think of happiness as transactional, does that actually mean it follows economic rules? Is it helpful in any way beyond my own aggrandizement? Also troubling - Those who knew me growing up will remember my preferred philosophical model back then was Classic Absurdism. So maybe I'm just gaslighting you all in service of that? Surely not.....

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