Thanks for writing this Michael! I think economists are too quick to jump to the conclusion that economic growth will mean more happiness. This is a really clear and useful summary on where we currently are. I do have a few half-baked critical thoughts:
Easterlin’s long run view is still much too short: most people in EA, and I assume the progress studies community, don’t discount the future much, if at all. This means they will care about timescales of millions and even billions of years. The compounding nature of economic growth means that increased growth could mean people far in the future become much richer than they otherwise would have been. So instead of considering if growth has made us happier over the past few decades it might be more helpful to compare our happiness now to what it likely was like hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Obviously we don’t have subjective wellbeing data stretching back that far, but we can still consider that other metrics such as infant mortality, disease etc. have dropped significantly over this time, and that part of the reason for this is economic progress. Further growth could reap similar benefits in the future. Generally I’m worried that interventions such as those carried out by StrongMinds are simply far too shorttermist, only improving the wellbeing of current generations. I’d like to see more research on how to improve wellbeing over an undiscounted future. I have already shared this with you, but I think that further research into innovative mental health treatments could be high impact.
Scale effects over long time periods are very plausible: it seems very plausible to me that a hunter gatherer would rate themselves as a 8⁄10 because they simply don’t know how good life can be. As Fin said, I’m not sure your argument against scale effects is convincing, and I’d like to see more work on this. Also, I used to be on the side of life satisfaction data, but issues such as scale effects have tilted me to think that more affective measures such as happiness might be more useful as they could be less prone to such biases. More research is likely needed here though.
You cannot ignore population ethics when it comes to these questions: you mention at the end of your post that the Easterlin paradox is only relevant for average wellbeing. This means it’s most useful for those who subscribe to an average utilitarian population axiology, or similar. There are serious problems with average utilitarianism (sadistic conclusion). I suppose the Easterlin paradox may be relevant for those with a person-affecting view, but it is unlikely to be that informative to a total utilitarian as economic growth likely increases the number of people who will live. I think one should be explicit if a paradox only bites under certain population axiologies.
Thanks for writing this Michael! I think economists are too quick to jump to the conclusion that economic growth will mean more happiness. This is a really clear and useful summary on where we currently are. I do have a few half-baked critical thoughts:
Easterlin’s long run view is still much too short: most people in EA, and I assume the progress studies community, don’t discount the future much, if at all. This means they will care about timescales of millions and even billions of years. The compounding nature of economic growth means that increased growth could mean people far in the future become much richer than they otherwise would have been. So instead of considering if growth has made us happier over the past few decades it might be more helpful to compare our happiness now to what it likely was like hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Obviously we don’t have subjective wellbeing data stretching back that far, but we can still consider that other metrics such as infant mortality, disease etc. have dropped significantly over this time, and that part of the reason for this is economic progress. Further growth could reap similar benefits in the future. Generally I’m worried that interventions such as those carried out by StrongMinds are simply far too shorttermist, only improving the wellbeing of current generations. I’d like to see more research on how to improve wellbeing over an undiscounted future. I have already shared this with you, but I think that further research into innovative mental health treatments could be high impact.
Scale effects over long time periods are very plausible: it seems very plausible to me that a hunter gatherer would rate themselves as a 8⁄10 because they simply don’t know how good life can be. As Fin said, I’m not sure your argument against scale effects is convincing, and I’d like to see more work on this. Also, I used to be on the side of life satisfaction data, but issues such as scale effects have tilted me to think that more affective measures such as happiness might be more useful as they could be less prone to such biases. More research is likely needed here though.
You cannot ignore population ethics when it comes to these questions: you mention at the end of your post that the Easterlin paradox is only relevant for average wellbeing. This means it’s most useful for those who subscribe to an average utilitarian population axiology, or similar. There are serious problems with average utilitarianism (sadistic conclusion). I suppose the Easterlin paradox may be relevant for those with a person-affecting view, but it is unlikely to be that informative to a total utilitarian as economic growth likely increases the number of people who will live. I think one should be explicit if a paradox only bites under certain population axiologies.