MANIFESTO FOR HAPPINESS. Shifting society from money to well-being

Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................. 9
PART ONE: The manifesto in brief ............................................................................................. 14
Chapter 2 - The disease ............................................................................................................. 14
1. The symptoms: unhappiness and haste ................................................................................ 14
2. The disease: the decline of relations ..................................................................................... 14
3. Defensive growth ................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter 3 - The causes of the disease: the change in values ....................................................... 19
1. Materialism and relations ...................................................................................................... 19
2. The market economy promotes materialism ........................................................................ 20
3. The media promote materialism ........................................................................................... 22
4. At the root of the problem: the life of children ..................................................................... 23
5. Crushing the sense of possibility ............................................................................................ 24
6. Lives and societies adrift ........................................................................................................ 25
7. Urban life ................................................................................................................................ 26
8. American urban sprawl .......................................................................................................... 28
9. The summer of 2007: the implosion of defensive capitalism ................................................ 29
Chapter 4 - Cures: relational policies ......................................................................................... 31
1. Change our cities .................................................................................................................... 31
2. Change urban space ............................................................................................................... 32
3. Reduce traffic ......................................................................................................................... 32
4. Change our schools ................................................................................................................ 33
5. Reduce advertising ................................................................................................................. 35
6. Change democracy ................................................................................................................. 36
7. Change the work experience ................................................................................................. 37
8. Less stressed and less performing? ....................................................................................... 39
9. Change healthcare ................................................................................................................. 40
10. Conclusion: State, market, relations .................................................................................... 41
11. Some objections ................................................................................................................... 44
11.1. A relational society is utopian ....................................................................................... 44
11.2. A relational society creates unemployment ................................................................. 45
PART TWO. America the example not to follow ........................................................................ 47
Chapter 5 - Why Americans are increasingly unhappy and overworked .................................... 47
1. Basic concepts and measures ................................................................................................ 47
1.1. Measures of happiness ................................................................................................... 47
1.2. Measures of growth ........................................................................................................ 48
2. Americans have become less happy ...................................................................................... 49
2.1 Subjective well-being ....................................................................................................... 49
2.2. Objective well-being ....................................................................................................... 49
3. Americans have become overworked ................................................................................... 51
4. Why do Americans strive so much for money if it does not buy them happiness? .............. 52
5. Happiness and relational poverty .......................................................................................... 53
6. Work and relational poverty .................................................................................................. 57
Box: The Easterlin paradox debate ............................................................................................ 58
Box: The myth of flat trends of subjective well-being ............................................................... 60
Box: Genetic happiness .............................................................................................................. 61
Chapter 6 - Defensive growth ................................................................................................... 63
1. Economic growth and relational poverty. ............................................................................. 63
2. The schizophrenia of growth. ................................................................................................ 65
Box for economists: the key equations of defensive growth. ................................................... 66
3. Envying alone ......................................................................................................................... 68
4. Mass examples of envy and solitude: China, India and the United States ............................ 70
5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 71
Box: Happiness is more evenly distributed in socially richer countries .................................... 72
Chapter 7. Loneliness, fear and ill-being as drivers of American growth .................................... 74
1. The rise of transaction costs .................................................................................................. 74
2. The industry of fear: security and social control ................................................................... 75
3. The industry of economic segregation: urban sprawl ........................................................... 76
4. The industry of malaise: healthcare ...................................................................................... 77
Box. Troubled lives, troubled health: mass examples from the U.S. ......................................... 79
5. Comparing the US and Europe ............................................................................................... 81
5.1 Economic growth and working hours. ............................................................................. 81
5.2 Relational goods and happiness ...................................................................................... 84
5.3 Defensive growth, Europe, the United States ................................................................. 86
Appendix to chapter 6................................................................................................................ 87
PART THREE. What affects the quality of relationships? ............................................................ 93
Chapter 8 - Markets, values, relations....................................................................................... 94
1. The marketability of goods .................................................................................................... 94
2. Changing values ..................................................................................................................... 95
3. Materialism and relational poverty ....................................................................................... 97
Box. How to measure materialism ............................................................................................. 99
4. Why does materialism erode relations? ................................................................................ 99
5. Crowding out of motivations ............................................................................................... 100
6. Why do market relations spread materialism? ................................................................... 101
7. Does relational poverty generate materialism? .................................................................. 102
8. Materialism and relationship with oneself .......................................................................... 103
9. Materialism in Europe .......................................................................................................... 104
Chapter 9 - The media as factory of desires............................................................................. 105
1. The intensification of competitive spending ....................................................................... 105
2. Media and marketing ........................................................................................................... 105
3. New frontiers ....................................................................................................................... 107
4. Digital advertising ................................................................................................................ 108
5. Neuromarketing ................................................................................................................... 109
Box: Neuropolitics .................................................................................................................... 112
Box: The impossible commercial ............................................................................................. 113
Chapter 10 - Born to buy? ....................................................................................................... 115
1. The ills young people ........................................................................................................... 115
2. Wrong explanations for youthful distress ........................................................................... 116
3. The relational distress of youngsters ................................................................................... 117
4. Competitive and media pressure ......................................................................................... 118
5. Materialism and young people ............................................................................................ 119
6. Advertising targeting kids .................................................................................................... 121
7. Summary .............................................................................................................................. 123
Chapter 11 - Born to work?..................................................................................................... 125
1. Adult-youth conflicts, ungovernable lives and social systems ............................................ 125
2. The sense of possibility. ....................................................................................................... 127
3. The culture of time. .............................................................................................................. 128
Chapter 12 - What kind of animal are we? .............................................................................. 131
1. Homo economicus is a fake .................................................................................................. 131
2. Humans: a cooperative species ........................................................................................... 132
3. Between- versus within-group selection ............................................................................. 134
4. The dismal science begins to smile: the social function of a scientific lie ........................... 136
PART FOUR: Policies for happiness ......................................................................................... 137
Chapter 13 - Urban policy: the relational city .......................................................................... 138
1. The modern city ................................................................................................................... 138
Box: New Urbanism: the shortcomings of car-dependence .................................................... 140
2. Space in a relational city ...................................................................................................... 141
3. Transport in a relational city ................................................................................................ 143
Chapter 14 - Policies for children and adolescents .................................................................. 145
1. The schooling system is flawed ............................................................................................ 146
1.1. Cognition vs. emotions.................................................................................................. 146
1.2. Extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivations .................................................................................. 146
1.3. Competition vs. cooperation ........................................................................................ 147
Box: Japanese hyper-competition ........................................................................................... 148
1.4. Effective vs. affective .................................................................................................... 148
1.5. Academic achievement vs. well-being .......................................................................... 150
2. Humanizing schools ............................................................................................................. 150
3. Pressure for change ............................................................................................................. 151
4. Change the school system ................................................................................................... 152
3.1 Participatory teaching .................................................................................................... 153
3.2 Social and emotional learning ........................................................................................ 153
3.3. Alternative schooling .................................................................................................... 154
5. Culture of performance and learning society ...................................................................... 155
6. What can parents do? .......................................................................................................... 157
7. The strain of parenting. ........................................................................................................ 157
Box: They are the problem ...................................................................................................... 159
Chapter 15. Policies for advertising ......................................................................................... 161
1. Proposals for regulation ....................................................................................................... 161
2. Counter-arguments .............................................................................................................. 163
3. Consumption as child autonomy ......................................................................................... 164
4. Advertising enables free television, better products, growth and employment. ............... 164
5. The parents’ fault ................................................................................................................. 166
Chapter 16 - Change democracy ............................................................................................. 168
1. Post-democracy: the democracy of 1% ............................................................................... 168
2. Politics for sale ..................................................................................................................... 169
3. How to reform post-democracy. ......................................................................................... 170
Box: E-politics ....................................................................................................................... 172
4. Post-democracy and globalization. ...................................................................................... 173
PART FIVE. Policies for healthcare .......................................................................................... 175
Healthcare spending out of control? ....................................................................................... 175
Chapter 18. Happiness as disease prevention ......................................................................... 178
1. The medicalisation of health ................................................................................................ 178
2. Is health improving? ............................................................................................................. 178
3. How to improve health? ...................................................................................................... 179
4. Happiness and health ........................................................................................................... 180
Box: Why does well-being influence health? ........................................................................... 183
Box: Happiness and longevity: the nuns’ study ....................................................................... 183
5. The social cure...................................................................................................................... 183
Box: Research on entire lives ................................................................................................... 186
Box: Daily effects of relationships on health ........................................................................... 187
6. Preventive happiness ........................................................................................................... 187
7. From curing the illness to caring for the ill .......................................................................... 189
8. Defensive medicine .............................................................................................................. 191
Box: Cuban relational healthcare ............................................................................................. 193
9. Medical knowledge .............................................................................................................. 194
Chapter 19. Manipulation of medical knowledge .................................................................... 197
1. The medicated society ......................................................................................................... 197
2. The invention of illness ........................................................................................................ 197
Box: Pharmaceutical marketing ............................................................................................... 199
3. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment ....................................................................................... 200
Box. Early diagnosis of cancer .................................................................................................. 203
4. Manipulated research: Trial and Terror ............................................................................... 204
4.1. Ex-ante distortions in research ..................................................................................... 204
4.2. Ex-post distortions in research ..................................................................................... 205
Box: Bird flu! Help! ................................................................................................................... 205
4.3. Ghost writing ................................................................................................................. 205
5. A research-based industry? ................................................................................................. 206
7. For-profit medicine .............................................................................................................. 209
8. Medical knowledge as marketing ........................................................................................ 210
9. How to improve medical knowledge ................................................................................... 212
Chapter 20. Conclusion: Healthcare as defensive expenditure ................................................. 215
1. Reducing healthcare demand through policies for relationships and medical knowledge 215
Box. When medical lies meet distress: opioids in the US ........................................................ 218
PART SIX: Epilogue: the Great Recession ................................................................................. 221
Chapter 21 - Prologue: the formidable American consumer .................................................... 221
1. The American consumer’s bulimia ....................................................................................... 222
2. The American consumer’s formidable debt ........................................................................ 224
3. Other explanations for the debt: wealth illusion, easy credit, increasing inequality .......... 225
Chapter 22 - Epilogue: the implosion of defensive growth....................................................... 228
1. The world-financed American consumption ....................................................................... 228
2. Exporting the crisis: the credit crunch ................................................................................. 230
3. Setting the fox to guard the henhouse ................................................................................ 231
4. Summary and conclusion: the desert behind and the abyss ahead .................................... 232
PART SEVEN: And now the good news: the relational society is possible ................................. 234
Chapter 24 - The 20th century is over ...................................................................................... 234
1. Our culture is changing ........................................................................................................ 234
2. Why the 20th century is over ................................................................................................ 235
3. America: from de Tocqueville to Katrina ............................................................................. 237
4. “Does economic growth improve the human lot?” is the wrong question ......................... 238
5. Post-growth .......................................................................................................................... 239
6. Where are we now? ............................................................................................................. 241
6. 1. The bad news ............................................................................................................... 242
6.2. The good news .............................................................................................................. 245