New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | February 2, 2006

Will Wilkinson wants to know whether you've got to be a little more miserable before he can be fully content.

Comments

|2.2.06 @ 12:18PM|#

In a land where Mormons, Muslims, and masochists walk side by side...

Is this some kind of inference to Catholics or something?

|2.2.06 @ 1:15PM|#

Will's rhetoric overreaches so much that it is hard to take him at face value.

Like a God-fearing man meeting his first atheist, Layard seems baffled by the fact that there are people who don�t see the world his way. He seems impatient with the duty of addressing critics and flippantly dismisses the formidable array of philosophical arguments against his brand of utilitarianism. If he had considered some of them more carefully, he might have been led to reconsider his naive approach to government.

Projection anyone?

|2.2.06 @ 3:49PM|#

Can I simply go on record as saying that it makes me unhappy that people like this Layard fellow seem to think they know what makes me happy?

Reading this article, I couldn't help but imagine him as a mugger who accosts you with a gun while wearing a big, yellow smilie-face mask.

|2.2.06 @ 6:43PM|#

I don't know that I'd categorize Wilkinson's approach as generally dismissive, Coach. He talks at length about problems with a utilitarian vision that seeks to maximize reported happiness in the article and on his happiness blog: http://happinesspolicy.com/

|2.2.06 @ 7:56PM|#

Wilkinson's retort about the �least-cost avoider� is smart but misses a crucial detail. The observation that income inequality produces unhappiness is made across cultures and appears to resemble closely the concept of dominance hierarchies, suggesting that this phenomena is relatively hard-wrired. A little evolutionary psychology will tell you've got very little chance of making people feel okay about being less well off as others.