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Fun debates
The Economist will import its highly regarded debate series into America. The first debate is November 10, in New York City.
The debators? Will Wilkinson and myself against Jeffrey Sachs and Betsey Stevenson. Here are the details. The proposition is: "America is failing at the pursuit of happiness."
I hope to see some of you there. Can you guess which side I am on?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 9, 2007 at 08:52 AM in Sports | Permalink
Comments
Whichever's the most unpopular.
Posted by: Scott Scheule at Oct 9, 2007 8:45:22 AM
No to the motion, I am sure. I also agree with Scott above. Economics at it's best tends to counterintuitive.
By the way, read your latest book and loved it.
Posted by: sa at Oct 9, 2007 8:48:41 AM
I think the tricky thing is the GDP to happiness binding. I believe Wilkinson acknowledges a non-linear relationship, and declining returns. That is, we need a certain amount of wealth (individually or nationally) but after that, perhaps we should focus our energies elsewhere.
It's kind of shallow to think that more wealth is always the answer. I mean, do we think that's what Britney or Paris need? I few more million?
Posted by: odograph at Oct 9, 2007 9:00:02 AM
I agree with sa. I think you'll argue that America is succeeding at the pursuit of happiness (especially since you'll be arguing against Betsey, who is likely to want to talk about declining women's happiness in support of her side).
Posted by: Kyle S at Oct 9, 2007 9:01:16 AM
(I wonder how Dan Gilbert would vote.)
Posted by: odograph at Oct 9, 2007 9:04:13 AM
So do these eventually turn up on line? I googled for previous debates and found nothing.
Posted by: Different Jeff at Oct 9, 2007 9:11:02 AM
Nevermind, I found them. Looks like they put up audio files on the magazine's website, and they are kind enough not to make it
premium/subscriber content.
Posted by: Different Jeff at Oct 9, 2007 9:15:58 AM
Obviously, we need a Czar and Department of Happiness. With the next Democrat president, maybe we can finally force people to direct their energies appropriately, rather than letting them wander aimlessly, lost, trying to find the path.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Oct 9, 2007 9:21:29 AM
Yancey, even if Americans are sometimes pursing happiness the wrong way (read that Gilbert book) it does not necessarily follow that we need a Czar.
All we may need to do is talk about it, be a little better informed on how it all works.
(As I said above, I think the flaw in American discussion of Happiness is this assumption of a tight and linear binding with GDP.)
Posted by: odograph at Oct 9, 2007 9:30:30 AM
Odograph: agreed that the link between GDP and happiness is thought to be too straightforward.
I'm heading to NY for the debates.
Posted by: Chloe at Oct 9, 2007 9:54:20 AM
Odograph,
The flaw in the discussion is the assumption that we know anything about how a few extra million will affect Britney or Paris' happiness, or mine, or any stranger you meet.
What produces happiness is a personal and subjective thing. It is fine with me if people debate what others should do in the pursuit of happiness, but, unfortunately, the goal of some debaters is some active governmental policy.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Oct 9, 2007 9:54:33 AM
All we are guaranteed is the pursuit, not actual happiness. If we fail to find it with the freedom to pursue it, well, it's our own fault. I imagine the logical argument in this debate will be around America's success at maintaining the freedom required to pursue happiness with limited inhibition.
Posted by: econ2econ at Oct 9, 2007 9:54:47 AM
I have been to Economist debates in Paris and London and I can indeed confirm that they are fantastic. A shame I can't be there!
Posted by: PEG at Oct 9, 2007 9:57:44 AM
I hope there will be a lively discussion of the relative merits of happiness and utility as social goals, and about the seeming architecture of each idea and its measures. The Federal Reserve Bank in Boston's new research center for behavioral economics churned out a few papers focusing on the idea, and one of the papers in particular treated happiness as an argument in a consumer's utility function, which seems pretty natural: the two ideas are obviously not equivalent (both a priori and in how they've been operationalized), and the authors of that paper argued pretty compellingly (to my mind) that it makes sense to consider happiness as something people tend to prefer in a ceteris paribus fashion.
The authors seemed to favor utility/preference as the better of the two for policy purposes; I was left wondering, though: what would you argue are the merits of each?
Posted by: Philip at Oct 9, 2007 11:13:43 AM
OT:
I just looked into marginal text messaging rates. ATT/Cingular, Verizon, and T-Mobile have recently raised their rate to .15/SMS. Text messaging must consume an incredibly small amount of resources compared to regular calls--is there any efficient justification for these major companies having the same rates? They all want to encourage the switch to more profitable SMS plans?
In Britain, text messaging was footloose and fancy free among pretty much all the carriers. Here, it seems they have restricted availability to squeeze compensation out of some users. Why is none of them willing to break ranks?
Posted by: interlocutor at Oct 9, 2007 11:18:24 AM
Hm -- actually, I'd like to amend that to read: "for policy or personal purposes." What are our best criteria for what's ... best? In what ways do the two ideas -- utility and happiness -- encounter difficulties as normative guides? (inconsistency of patterns of revealed preference of the sort implied by hyperbolic discounting and, on the other hand, the volatility of happiness would seem fair criticisms of each, I think)
Is there a notion of "meaning" and its pursuit left aside by both focusing on and attempting to measure simply utility and happiness?
Posted by: Philip at Oct 9, 2007 11:19:07 AM
I'm a long time reader (lurker) at MR. I've already booked my tickets for the debate. Looking forward to it.
Posted by: HeShootsAndScores at Oct 9, 2007 11:31:20 AM
What is the format of the Debate, Parlimentary? Do you know if you will propose or critique a motion?
Posted by: mthomas at Oct 9, 2007 11:43:54 AM
Yancey, I think we do know some things. But unfortunately one of the initial conflicts we find (the first battleground) is in the definition of happiness itself. I've been a believer in reported happiness (when people say how happy they are, they are usually not wrong). I was pleased to see Gilbert endorse that, with his greater experience and eduction on these issues.
If you accept Gilbertian (Odographian) happiness as the measure, we know how it correlates to wealth. That is, wealth helps, but it isn't the only thing that helps. It isn't enough to compensate for chemical dependence, etc.
BTW for those who don't know, fans of GDP-happiness will attempt to redefine the term. You are as "happy" as you should be, if you really understood your health, wealth, and position. In this extreme view, how you feel is not directly related.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 9, 2007 12:06:11 PM
Of course one of the happiest countries is Bhutan which keeps a GNH (Gross National Happiness figure. But wasn't it Iceland that came out in the poll as the happiest nation one year. The story was that they liked the simple pleasures of going out in the freezing North Atlantic to fish. Well then a couple of years later it was found that quite a bit of the data may have been skewed by the population's consumption of anti-depressant drugs.
Posted by: Pitt at Oct 9, 2007 12:17:58 PM
If I recall correctly, Gilbert does about a chapter-length defense of 'reported happiness.' There are certainly cross-cultural issues as we start to compare national economies and strategies for happiness. But, I find the conclusion compelling that even if the 'reported' data is sometimes messy, it is still the best we've got.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 9, 2007 12:20:40 PM
Well to help you prepare for either position it probably wouldn't hurt to look at some of the findings of "Dr. Happy" http://s.psych.uiuc.edu/~ediener/faq.html.
From my travels in Nicaragua I would say that freedom of expression, music, culture, family and friends are more important than material wealth. So of course you will be arguing the opposite position!!
Posted by: Pitt at Oct 9, 2007 12:28:15 PM
"I think the tricky thing is the GDP to happiness binding. I believe Wilkinson acknowledges a non-linear relationship, and declining returns. That is, we need a certain amount of wealth (individually or nationally) but after that, perhaps we should focus our energies elsewhere.
It's kind of shallow to think that more wealth is always the answer. I mean, do we think that's what Britney or Paris need? I few more million?"
1. Median happiness and a given individual's happiness may have to be viewed separately, just as we do with GDP. Neither Bill Gates nor Kim Jong Il need more money. However that doesn't mean that the median GDP per capita in either country is at the optimal level.
2. Lets assume that you are correct and that $1 more for Paris Hilton will not make her more happy. Lets even suppose that $1 more is just as likely to make her worse off as better off. This does not mean any of the following are true:
a) $1 more for Paris Hilton won't make anyone better off
b) A price cap on Paris Hilton won't make Paris Hilton much worse off
c) A price cap on Paris Hilton won't make other people worse off
In fact, if you take into consideration all of the potential side effects of trying to change the way that people make themselves happy -- even if people do it by greedily trying to acquire more money -- you might find that the median happiness goes down quite a lot, even though you are trying to help people increase their happiness in a more efficient manner.
Posted by: liberty at Oct 9, 2007 12:56:04 PM
Yancy,
Yours is an extreme sceptic's view. It assume we can't know anything about happiness. By extension, there is nothing to gain by asking questions. It has been possible to take that view of any question asked in the course of human intellectual endeavor, but some of the questions have led to useful answers.
As an alternative, in a world rich enough to afford at least as much gratification of curiousity as our Enlightenment forefathers, may I suggest that we continue to nose around and see what can be learned? We might learn something generalizable about human nature during the effort. If you prefer to call that part of human nature about which we learn something by a different name than "happiness", you will of course be able to do so.
Posted by: kharris at Oct 9, 2007 1:18:13 PM
Liberty, compare the idea of an income cap (IMO not very useful) to the European idea of mandated holidays.
That's a very foreign idea to us Americans. No doubt many of you are recoiling from it even now (I do to a degree) ... but does it work? What if it does work? Would we Americans put our markets and our GDP ahead of vacations and happiness even then?
That, I think, is the kind of hard question that comes out of this.
(Or if a visit to Yosemite makes us happy, should we sacrifice some GDP to have more parks?)
Posted by: odograph at Oct 9, 2007 1:30:10 PM
