At the Business. More on the Happy Planet Index.
Timmy Elsewhere
4 responses
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A few weeks ago The Business ran this related piece:
http://www.thebusiness.co.uk/the-magazine/columns/105636/the-economics-of-happiness-just-state-control-with-a-smile.thtml
Tim adds: Hmm. That might be a good idea actually. Reading teh archives of the magazine I’m blogging for….. -
According to the HPI website, the HPI “is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered.” They are claiming, then, that Colombia is more efficient than the US at delivering whatever happiness it delivers to its citizens.
Of what relevance to this is the “revealed preference” of immigrants to the US? Those people apparently want to live in a country that has a higher standard of living. That doesn’t make the US ecologically more efficient, which is what the HPI measure is supposed to capture.
Where is the “elegant refutation”? Surely the reductio ad absurdum of your borrowed TPA point is that everything the West does is perfect because people want to move here. People may claim they don’t like torture/state surveillance/internment but just look — they want to immigrate! Ergo these things should continue, via the magical doctrine of revealed preferences. -
StuartA, I would have thought the reductio ad absurdum was not that the West was perfect, just that it was better than the alternative.
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You’re right. It wouldn’t imply absolute perfection, just that West was better than everybody else on whatever issue the TPA et al. chose.
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