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The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (The Yale ISPS series)

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The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (The Yale ISPS series) (Paperback)

by RE Lane (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press; New edition edition (10 Oct 2001)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0300091060
ISBN-13: 978-0300091069
Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 430,762 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

"The day is near when people will discover the Sisyphusian nature of the pursuit of material goods as a source of lasting contentment and meaning. Professor Lane's well-written and well-documented book will be the text of the new recognition that all who are out of poverty must formulate other goals in life than the amassment of objects during the day and their consumption at night." Amitai Etzioni, author of The New Golden Rule "A book of great importance for our time. Lane asks whether our most treasured institutions - market economies and democratic political systems - are good for subjective well-being. He approaches this question with a breadth of knowledge and scholarship that is difficult to match." David O. Sears, University of California, Los Angeles

David O. Sears, University of California, Los Angeles

"A book of great importance for our time. Lane asks whether our most treasured institutions - market economies and democratic political systems - are good for subjective well-being. He approaches this question with a breadth of knowledge and scholarship that is difficult to match."

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5.0 out of 5 stars Happiness, not good enough as a goal?, 19 Aug 2006

By	L. van den Muyzenberg "Management Consultant" (Cannes France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is probably the most complete Western book about happiness. Robert Lane recommends that to the goal of happiness should be added the goals of justice and personal development. He uses "happiness" with the meaning of "satisfaction with life", or with "Subjective Well Being" (SWB). The difference being that happiness is a fleeting emotion and satisfaction with life a more profound view.
He accuses economists of wanting to maximise one dimension only like "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people" (Jeremy Bentham), or maximise increases in GDP per person. The belief of many people in prosperous countries is, that increasing GDP per person will lead to increases in happiness. Prof Lane refers to this belief as the "Economistic Fallacy" which he considers a major threat to the future of the USA. He proves conclusively that in the USA and other prosperous countries, increases in GDP per person do not lead to increases in happiness. He points out that governments focus too exclusively on increasing GDP. Governments should in all their policies ask themselves if their policies contribute to the three goals of happiness, justice and personal development. The title of the book can create the mistaken impression that Professor Lane is against a free market and democracy. His main point is that the market and democracy on their own do not lead automatically to increased happiness and that the three goals should also be considered by governments when attempting to make the free market and democracy function satisfactorily. He points out that happiness is dependent on what he refers to as "companionship" (that is friends) and a good family life. At no point does he suggest that the free market and democracy can be replaced by better systems.
He refers to the need to make trade offs between wealth on the one hand and, companionship and family life on the other. Trade offs is a concept economists like. My preference is to figure out how these interdependent concepts can reinforce each other. That is, not seeing it as a zero sum game but as a win-win situation. This is not to deny that fathers and mothers that work so much that they spend hardly any time with their children do not have the right balance.
Similar ideas to those of Prof. Lane have been presented in other interesting books by economists in "Happiness and Economics"- "How the economy and institutions affect human well-being" by Frey and Stutzer and in "Development as Freedom" by Amartya Sen (see my reviews). There is also a vast Buddhist literature about happiness as a vital aspect of the science of the mind. See for example "The Universe in a Single Atom" by the Dalai Lama (see my review).
The importance of the book by Prof Lane is that he is a prominent political scientist, as shown by the fact that he was President of the American Political Science Organisation and also President of the International Society of Political Psychology. His book refers to and evaluates a very large number of scientific studies in the two fields of political science and political psychology and the book is also in that respect invaluable.

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