Sandwichman wrote:
That's an externality that the happiness literature is big on. While
envy may contribute to unhappiness, I doubt it's decisive. I mean,
somebody has to be predisposed to enviousness, for someone else's
consumption to make them unhappy. If I'm a zen buddhist, your luxury
consumption doesn't bother me a bit.
Scitovsky also talks about the intrinsic satisfaction people gain from
work, friendship, etc. but that aren't counted in the economist's
measurement of market exchanges and other monetary transfers. Envy
just fills a void created by the absence or abridgement of those
intrinsic satisfactions.
If I recall correctly, Scitovsky's claims, like those of modern
economic "happiness" studies, are based on "behavioral psychology" (a
somewhat more realistic version than neoclassical economics of the
mistaken modeling of social theory on physics).
This contrasts with the "moral science" tradition to which Marx and
Keynes belong that understands "happiness" in terms of e.g.
Aristotle's idea of "eudaimonia" (for an excellent summary of
Aristotle's ideas, see Jean Vanier's Made for Happiness).
Kleinian psychoanalysis provides an explanation of "envy" as
psychopathogy (see Klein's "Envy and Gratitutde" in The Writings of
Melanie Klein, vol. iii).
Ted
