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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

> You're not going to convince folks the world is better when they know what kind of deal they're getting vs others out there

So people can never be happy if inequality exists? Sounds like an unsolvable problem. No matter how good everything gets, people will still be unhappy because someone else seemingly has it better. 1000 years from now:

"Poor person: Sure, I own a 7000 sq ft mansion with an electric drone that can fly me around everywhere and my life expectancy is 105 and my standard of living is an order of magnitude better than the richest people living in 20XX, but Elon Musk VII's life expectancy is 120 and he owns an entire planet with a space fleet, my life sucks, the universe is so unfair."

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American poor people today have a better quality of life than medieval kings.

Research has shown that happiness is heavily based on social status, and wealth or income is one of the key factors in social status. People constantly compare themselves against everyone they see, including in the media.

As a meta question we should ask whether happiness is the right metric to optimize in social policy? Unhappiness motivates some people to work harder and accomplish more. Whether that's a good or bad thing is entirely subjective.

Happiness = Reality minus expectations. Also, people, like many animals, are innately driven to compare each other and themselves. This may be a trait that provides (or has provided) an evolutionary advantage, especially in in the process of mating.

Huh, it's interesting how I interpreted the parent poster's point in a completely different way.

My takeaway was that my personal happiness is moderately diminished by the fact that I had such a privileged upbringing compared to others born into almost inescapable poverty, and that my charitable contributions towards famine relief / malaria / etc. don't make a huge impact on addressing the root causes of inequity.

Interesting that you read that comment as inequality...

> You're not going to convince folks the world is better when they know what kind of deal they're getting vs others out there

Somehow i read that as equal opportunities.... To me a fair deal generally means, something close to equal opportunities(of course, ceteris paribus, and rarely do we have all other things equal, but adjusting for it..)

but opportunities are far from equal in many parts of the world, including the US. poverty alone limits your opportunities when you can't even afford a car to apply for a job, or are stuck in a bad school that limits your chances to go to college. in other parts of the world you can't even go to school if you can't afford it.

Exactyl my point... I think we're on the same page/boat/car/whatever...

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