3 ms·
It's ridiculous, but this argument tends to boil down to whether the author chooses to plot happiness against LOG income (look ma! a straight line!) or plain ol
by gmac 11y ago
It's ridiculous, but this argument tends to boil down to whether the author chooses to plot happiness against LOG income (look ma! a straight line!) or plain old linear income. IMHO plotting against exclusively log income mainly serves to obscure arguments for redistribution and is borderline dishonest.
- im3w1l 11y agoSo looking at yours (happiness proportional to log income) and J-dawgs (its relative wealth that matters) comments I had an idea. If we imagine dominance as a tree, then the number of levels below you is proportional to the log of the rank of your income, intensive handwaving something something, log of your income. So could it be that what actually matters is your level in the dominance tree?
- nibs 11y agoYes - except that last week the article [1] about power and autonomy discussed how people seek power in a misguided attempt at autonomy. If you think in survivalistic terms, the most powerful position to be in is one where others need you (and therefore you have high social capital) but you don't need them (so you could walk away if you wanted). This is actually autonomy, not power, but otherwise the people around you might experience the repercussions of your decisions as power. I think money is just a derivative of the needs and wants of people, and so the desire for money is mostly just the pursuit of what you want, misguided or not. More money means more autonomy. It goes deeper too, as people want mastery and respect, which can also be derived from work in a profound, interdependent to the community kind of way. [1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/people-want-power-because-they-want-autonomy/474669/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/people-wan...