Sharing the pie versus making the unfair pie bigger

"A Rising tide lifts all vessels" said John F. Kennedy, though he forgot to mention only those that are floating. A rising tide only makes sunken ships harder to salvage.

Consider the future, with the pie big enough for all - yet with Americans still consuming 20 times as much as the average Indian. (And still polluting 50 times as much [Dennis Gabor, _The Mature Society_ p25])

Imagine a world with two billion Chinese and Indians, and a billion and a half Africans and Latin Americans owning minivans and commuting two hours to work, feeding bears in Yellowstone park and eating 50 or so pounds of sugar annually - and creating 50 times the pollution they currently make. That would stress the earth, but would probably be possible. Now imagine Americans owning the equivalent of 20 minivans, and somehow consuming 1000 pounds of sugar annually. Even if we could afford that without turning the earth into a poisoned desert, the billions of non-Americans would still be envious and unsatisfied. This is because there's two kinds of goods: material, and positional.

Material goods make all people happy - good food, a comfortable home, convienient transportation. Positional goods are status symbols: rare artworks, fashion clothes, high-tech novelties.

Positional goods are useless when all have them:

• Victorian rich couldn't get enough complexity and clutter. Once mass-production came along, clutter suddenly wasn't stylish.
• In poor countries livestock such as cattle are hoarded by the (relatively) rich. Not so in rich countries.
• In Europe, the rich would go on hunts, with masses of servants and dogs. The invention of the gun allowed hunting for anybody, and this practice faded.
• Automobiles were prestigious luxuries until the Model T came them into boring "cars".
• Bamboo is the ultimate building material - but third world countries don't want it, opting instead for expensive concrete and steel. Bamboo is used by the poor, and therefore holds no prestige.
• Etched glass used to be valuable. In the age of mass production it's tacky.
• Big gardens sprawled around old European mansions. Not so in the age of lawnmowers.
• Easter Islander clans impressed each other with giant statues. In the age of concrete and moulds this would be considered crass.
• Acres of cloth used to make up the huge dresses of rich women. Eventually cloth became so cheap that normal clothes became fashionable.
• The new rage is "thin electronics". I've never heard of cell phones dying from obesity.
• Air travel used to be an adventure. Now it's a chore for those without private jets.
• Make-up and perfume used to fashionable. Now that it's inexpensive it "makes you look like a whore".
• Europeans used to covet feathers from American birds like the dodo. Now that domesticated ostrige feathers can be died any color, they're out of style.
• People buy P400s and use them the same way people use typewriters. They buy portable computers that never leave home.
• Rich people would cover the walls of their mansions with portraits, until photography took away the distinction.
• Furs coats became tacky only when fake fur was introduced.
• Purple was the royal color, until it could be made artificially.
• A high school education could get all sorts of jobs when it was rare. Now people spend years getting university educations just to compete for modest jobs. (People must work harder to get to the same place.)
• The rich used to go to operas. Sound recording and radio came along and now opera sounds silly. On the other hand, Shakespeare used to be massively popular. This declined, and today it has snob appeal.
• The Roman empire took pride in its roads. Today, not many people are thrilled to have paving.
• When explorers started uncovering ancient Egypt, the rich collected mummies. When more were found, they were ground up as medicine or burned as fuel. Today, mummies are valuable again.
• Leaders don't wear crowns or sit on thrones anymore - now that anybody can afford them.

Overall:

• A century ago you'd be envied if you owned a car. Today, you're envied if you own a horse.

I could go on, but the point's been made. If everybody was rich, nobody would *want* to be rich. (Even if it's possible: can you have an orchestra made entirely of conductors?)

Richard Easterlin:

"In all societies, more money for the individual typically means more individual happiness. However, raising the incomes of all does not increase the happiness of all. The happiness-income relation provides a classic example of the logical fallacy of composition - what is true for the individual is not true for society as a whole...Individuals assess their material well-being, not in terms of the absolute amount of goods they have, but relative to a social norm of what goods they ought to have" ["Does money buy happiness?" The Public Interest Winter 1973 p4]

Thus, no matter how big you make the pie, it can't satisfy. The obvious solution is to make people equal in wealth, so we can begin the pursuit of happiness instead of the pursuit of status through heinously expensive conspicuous consumption.

The law of diminishing returns

Something to think about: "If Americans were asked whether they would agree to reduce their energy consumption by one half, many would probably recoil in apprehension and reject the idea. Yet energy consumption in 1960 was about half what it is now [~1980] Most of us remember 1960. Surely we had a civilized country then...Yet we were consuming only half the energy we are using now. Have we, by doubling our energy consumption, doubled our happiness?" (Kimon Valaskakis, P. Sindell, J G Smith, and Martin I Fitzpatrick, The Conserver Society p 181)

To the starving, a few dollars a day means life. To a billionaire, a few dollars doesn't make that kind of difference. "Once some minimal income is attained, the amount of money you have matters little in terms of bringing happiness. Above the poverty level, the relationship between income and happiness is remarkably small." (Jonathan Freedman, _Happy People_ p 140) In short, no matter how efficient production of wealth is, the use of wealth to produce happiness is inefficient. The only way to make wealth more efficient in creating happiness is to spread it around.

But is sharing really VERSUS growth?

I've based this all on the commonly held assumption that sharing and growth are incompatible. This is a fallacy, but so deeply held that I'm not even going to bother fighting it.