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Relational goods (and bads)
If you believe that money won’t make you happy, it’s because you don’t know how to spend it, according to a blatantly hedonistic advertising campaign. Or maybe it’s because you are pursued by ever-improved models, because you are continually forced to make comparisons, to search for that something extra that the others don’t have. Yet, within the economics of happiness there is one resource that really is running out: a commodity that is anti-merchandise (because it has no market) but has a value (because it satisfies a need), albeit having no price (because it’s free).
We are talking about relational goods, in which it is the relationship itself that constitutes the value of the goods. Interpersonal relationships are born, from encounters in which the identity and the goodwill of the concerned parties are essential. In friendship, one example of a relational commodity, the fact that one cannot be a friend unilaterally demonstrates the fact. Just as one friend isn’t worth the same as another. Exactly because they are strictly limited and dependent on motivation and reciprocity, relational goods have been defined by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum as "fragile goods." But, at variance with traditional resources that get used up with use, the more you use this social capital, the more it increases.
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