[p2p-research] More detail on money and happiness

[Alex Rollin]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 12:55 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> > Yet another study, this one by Boyce et al. (open access), confirming
>> that money doesn't buy happiness, people gain "utility" from occupying a
>> higher ranked position within an income distribution rather than from either
>> absolute income or their position relative to a reference wage:
>>
>> I wonder how these things compare to Food and Shelter which so many on
>> the planet are without...
>>
>>
> Strangely, culture after culture, society after society, the same result
> keeps coming up.  People don't care about absolute wealth very much.  They
> care about being at the top of a relative grouping.  Hierarchy may very well
> be innate particularly at local levels.  Overcoming that seems problematic,
> to say the least.
>
> It seems pretty effective to aid a middle class in outnumbering everyone
else.  Then the bulk of people find themselves compared to others like them
and have reasonable expectations.  Comparing and contrasting is a built in
survival logic and won't be deprecated any time soon.  Better to have it
work for ecological sustainability, social justice, and internal awareness.


> Another interesting similar story much in the psychological press...animals
> seem to have personality types as leaders, followers, flatterers, etc. very
> much as people do.  Again, this would seem to mediate against the ideas of
> either equality or peer to peer at first blush.  Biologically, we may be
> wired to fill social niches in hierarchies.
>
That seems reasonable since change is a real part of life and adaptation
requires an approach that goes through several stages.  There are no pure
types in humans since we all doa little of each in the early years, and most
of us through out our lives.

This post sent me on a related trip to look up some of the strategies for
the surveys on 'quality of life' undertaken around the planet.

A year ago there was some interest on this list in a project I nosed around
in, the FactorEFarm in Missouri, USA.  That project is working on
'inventing' or re-inventing a set of tools that are used to build the
infrastructure of civilization.   When quality of life surveys are taken,
though, for the most part, these aspect are skipped in preference for things
like this NZ survey that asks questions like "do you feel safe after dark in
your neighborhood/"

http://www.internationalliving.com/Internal-Components/Further-Resources/quality-of-life-2010

It doesn't ask if there is a dry cleaner in your neighborhood, or if you own
a drill, jigsaw, and screwdriver.

On my hunt to find a way, a means, a method for a dependency tree of goods
and services, and turning them all into P2P operations for a localized
economy, I almsot lost myself in thinking I didn't need to examine this
anymore, and I could just look at the NZ questionnaire "Did you attempt to
visit a Doctor and could not?" when I saw the definition of capital in the
glossary of the World Bank:

http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/modules/glossary.html
*Capital. *The money or wealth needed to produce goods and services. See
also *human capital* and*physical capital.*
*
*
What about people?  What about cooperative social responsibility?  What
about the failure of things that are too big too fail?

Yes, lots of questions, you probably have more, and they can't be answered,
but, that's why I'm interested in the physical foundations of quality of
life, plus the interactions, and the sharing of experience that powers the
creation of culture.

Quality of life as a result of a multitude of inputs.
A living wage that is responsive to the local (going global) environment
Coordination tools that decrease friction, increase intelligence, and negate
counter-productive arbitrage

A public, common infrastructure, owned, operated, and managed by the people.

The race to the middle seems like a great race to me.  I remember those
China fears when they first came up, about what happens if everyone in China
lives like they live in Dallas, TX.  We all know now that the 'typical'
Western lifestyle is too much to expect, but what is enough to expect?  And
isn't that worth working towards?  Of course?!  But why don't we see a
re-calibration of these surveys and studies for that standard, or some
agreed upon matrix for evaluation and examination of that standard,
something solid so we could have a real conversation about validity and
perspective on such a standard over the next 10 years as we work towards it
instead of rolling with mediatic punches and biased surveys that are often
off-topic even though they are provocative?

A
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