Changed Minds Change Worlds

July 18, 2005

Caring less about relative position may well be the least cost "solution" to the relative income externality "problem."

Will Wilkinson and others on how much better life could be for everyone if we could think reasonably and generously about whether someone else's happiness needs to subtract from our own -- if we were to be free, finally, from the burden of envy.

Some doubt it's possible. We don't. Neither do the authors of this Harvard-Princeton paper. Wherefore the fret? What is the embedded narrative, the Lakoff frame, that would endlessly tinker unhappily with Reality?

And why would I suffer guilt about being rich? 'Tis a problem easily remedied, one way or the other.

"If I think you're my problem, I'm insane."

Join the fun. Or not. Either way, life goes on.