Happiness and the Economy Project

As part of the MGT 301 Business Ethics course, which I am currently teaching here in Rome, we are working on a project to explore what the components of an economy ordered to human happiness might be. This blog post will serve to keep track of what we are reading.

[revised February 20, 2012]

OUTLINE

1. Does the current economic arrangement lead to happiness?

Happiness is the highest good
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2002.htm#article1

Wealth, not happiness, is the purpose of the market economy
http://www.economist.com/node/8450035

Happiness and wealth are only weakly correlated
http://oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/54353115535

The Easterlin Paradox (increases in income do not correlate with increases in happiness)
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3439

The current happiness and economics debate appears to focus on government policy
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0621_happiness_graham.aspx

The current economic order appears to be leading to greater concentration of wealth and power, and hence towards Belloc's Servile State
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/capitalism-after-the-crisis

2. Are there any alternatives?

Other alternatives won't make us any happier
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods136.html

The current state is inevitable
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Liddy.shtml

The Quest for a Third Way (Allan Carlson)
http://www.profam.org/docs/acc/thc.acc.110323.3way.uva.htm

3. What principles should underly an economy ordered to happiness?

(In the article above, Carlson proposes several principles for what he calls "The Family Way"):

Widespread private property, firmly in family hands as the foundation of a free society
Subsidiarity: Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize
Responsibility: the central social and political challenge is to keep competition and the quest for efficiency out of the family and other small community; and at the same time to keep family-styled altruism out of central government
Defend the natural family economy through appeals to human nature and human history, emphasizing marriage and the generation of children
Place primary faith in cultural affirmations, and only secondary trust in state actions
Religious motivation: Look to the infusion of religious energy into culture, politics, and economic life as the surest source of renewal. Only homo religiosus, economist Wilhelm Röpke’s name for man created in the image of God, only this ‘religious man’ can stand up to the servile heir of homo economicus, or ‘economic man’
Build on small acts. In the end, the Family Way means reconnecting everyday tasks with the great purposes of the Creator. Only then do common deeds bend toward transcendence