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> I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industriali

• sudosysgen 6y ago
  Sure, and time wise we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing and material wealth while happiness decreases. The data doesn't support your claim, almost every study done on the subject doesn't support your claims. As for the the vast majority of people not thinking that well-being and quality of life depends on your subjective experience and feelings, I think you have a wildly distorted idea of how people think. As in, completely ridiculous and disconnected with reality. Go and talk with people in real life, ask them what makes them happy and what is the cause of their sorrows, and you'll find that unless their name is "Scrooge McDuck" their answer won't be material wealth. And calling that Marxism is the most absurd thing I've heard all day. Apparently mentally well-adjusted people are all Marxists now, let's unfurl the red banners! Relative wealth has an effect on well-being, for obvious social reasons, which is why you can see that correlation in the link you sent. There is absolutely no data indicating that marginal absolute wealth does anything for well-being. Finally, >I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation You're going to have to back up that claim. Specifically, find data so that every industrialized nation has a political system that diverges significantly from the will of the common man (moreso than average will weighted by dollar of wealth), and that this is in no case due to the economic self-interest of some. Good luck!
  • bhupy 6y ago
    > Sure, and time wise we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing and material wealth while happiness decreases. The data doesn’t support your claim, almost every study on the subject doesn’t support your claim. You can’t just declare “the data doesn’t support your claim” without providing any. Repeating it again and again doesn’t make it true. On my part, I literally just provided you with a list of the most economically free countries. They include (in order): Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands, among many others. They correlate strongly with most accepted lists of so-called “happiest countries”. This directly refutes your claim that “we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing while happiness decreases”. If you’d like it directly spelled out for you, here’s the research that not only observes the same correlation, but attempts to even prove the causation. https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2016/06/shsconf_rptss2016_01109.pdf https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2016/06... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9770-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9770-9 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/coep.12190 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/coep.12190 https://www.yorktonthisweek.com/2.5111/people-in-countries-with-high-levels-of-freedom-are-happier-1.2017033 https://www.yorktonthisweek.com/2.5111/people-in-countries-w... > You’re going to have to back up that claim I already did, multiple times. Every single liberal industrialized nation is structured around economic markets, where the means of production are privately owned. By definition this means that the majority of the industrialized world is driven by economic self interest. There are of course variations here and there: you have the Anglo-Saxon model[1], the German Model[2] the Rhine model[3], etc. All just slightly varying accoutrements sprinkled over the same fundamental structure: how best to channel economic self-interest for the public good. It is, in fact, you who needs to back up your claims. “Good luck!” [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_model [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      > already did, multiple times. Every single liberal industrialized nation is structured around economic markets, where the means of production are privately owned. By definition this means that the majority of the industrialized world is driven by economic self interest. There are of course variations here and there: you have the Anglo-Saxon model[1], the German Model[2] the Rhine model[3], etc. All just slightly varying accoutrements sprinkled over the same fundamental structure: how best to channel economic self-interest for the public good. That is almost entirely orthogonal to your claim that there are no truly democratic industrialized nations. >On my part, I literally just provided you with a list of the most economically free countries. They include (in order): Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands, among many others. They correlate strongly with most accepted lists of so-called “happiest countries”. This directly refutes your claim that “we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing while happiness decreases”. If you’d like it directly spelled out for you, here’s the research that not only observes the same correlation, but attempts to even prove the causation. I have not made claims about economic freedom, but material wealth. The best example is the US, where economic output has grown but happiness and life-satisfaction has decreased. As I said, this must be analyzed over a time series, your comparisons are useless for hundreds of reasons. So is your equivocation of economic output and economic freedom. There have been many cases in time-series of economic freedom increasing and happiness/life satisfaction decreasing, too. In fact, one of your studies even points that out, if you've read them in their entirety: hat is, shrinking the size of the government (i.e., reducing the tax burden on citizens) seems to be negatively related to subjective well-being. Furthermore, it is trivially true that economic output and happiness are not causative, for the simple reason that in the last 30 years or so happiness and well-being have been decreasing while economic output has been skyrocketing. It is also trivially true that aggregate economic freedom can increase while economic output can decrease. Finally, I've never even made the claim that we should reduce economic freedom, or that markets are bad, or anything like that. I've made two claims - that the political self-interest of the masses is essentially different from their economic self-interest in that it can suit the goals of the individual better, and that well-being and happiness is only tangentially correlated to material wealth. From these premises I draw the conclusion that we should only pursue material wealth insofar as it actually benefits our well-being, and that government involvement in the economy can be good as long as the government is actually following the will of the people and that it is the best way to do so. So far you've been attacking a bizarre strawman, and have failed to back up your claims.