| |
|
Old and new economics of happiness
From a branch of economics (defined as "sad science") a new discipline has arisen - the economics of happiness. A definition which, when we look closely at it, is not all that new. Already in the Enlightened 1700s, the Italians Antonio Genovesi and Pietro Verri defined the nascent economic discipline as "a science of public happiness." Even the hyper-liberal economist Adam Smith - father of that much-abused metaphor of the interests of the butcher, in whose individual gain an aim to the collective happiness is represented - affirms in one of his lesser-known works (The Theory of Moral Sentiments) that having our own happiness at heart entails having the happiness of others at heart. It’s not wealth that grants happiness, but rather happiness, individual and community, that favours the achievement of wealth.
The value scale has been overturned. If, as the Beatles sang, "Money can’t buy me love," there are many people who are living proof that money doesn’t buy happiness either. The amount of university chairs, theories, investigations and evidence is multiplying. Specialist journals like The Journal of Happiness Studies are flourishing. A data bank has been established: the World Database of Happiness. On Amazon, under "economy of happiness" at least two hundred titles of essays and scientific publications appear. The oldest dates from 1902. The BBC has dedicated a six-part series and a comedy series to exploring the theme.
Huge multinationals like Ericsson organise research seminars into mental well-being at the workplace. In Australia The Happiness Institute is operating, where for 140 dollars an hour they’ll teach you to increase your level of it. The American economist Paul Zane Pilzer, author of The Wellness Revolution, calculates that the happiness industry is now the third biggest sector after the auto industry and information technology, with an annual turnover of a thousand billion dollars.
(16/06/2006)
print
|
|
|
|
|
