Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

The US is the most successful country in human history, as measured by the current in vogue metric of excellence, which is how much stuff (food, housing, cars, toys, etc) everyone has.

There are two kinds of wealth - private wealth and public wealth.

Private wealth is the things that you own, the money in your bank account, the car you drive, the house you live in, etc. For that kind of wealth, Americans are very well off, especially compared to the rest of the world.

Public wealth is the things that you share with others as a society, and how good those things are. It's things like the state of infrastructure, the ease of getting healthcare, the quality and safety of public spaces, how people feel when they're not in their home. For this sort of wealth America is a low way down the rankings.

Unfortunately for Americans, it's the public wealth that actually makes you happy unless you're in the 1% of the 1% who can afford to avoid public spaces entirely. If you own a luxury car but the roads are terrible that's just a reminder that your wealth can't solve all your problems. If you can afford to go to the fanciest restaurants but you're scared to wait for a cab outside afterwards, you're not going to be very happy with the meal. This is true for most aspects of life. Society needs to feel safe for people to truly feel happy.

You also can't ignore the mechanisms behind the private "wealth".

Air conditioning and central heating isn't a luxury when you live in a climate incompatible with human live without it. Having a car isn't a luxury when the infrastructure to bike, walk, or take public transit to your destinations does not exist. Having a three-thousand-square-foot home with a two-car garage isn't luxury when it is literally illegal to build the kind of mixed-use apartment building you actually want to live in. All of that is of course made worse when you're being forced to go into heavy debt to sustain this "luxury" lifestyle.

And as the article points out, it gets even more obvious when you look at day-to-day life. Sure, working that 9-hour-a-day job with a three-hour-a-day commute might mean you can afford another iPhone per year, but wouldn't you rather give up that iPhone for a 7-hour-a-day job with a 30-minute-a-day commute? Who care about wealth when you don't have the time and energy to spend that extra cash on things like meeting with your friends, cooking the meals you love, or enjoying a hike in the forest?

Plenty of seemingly asset-wealthy people are cash-poor, and even the cash-rich are usually time-poor. No wonder they aren't happy: they are too busy working to actually live.

> scared to wait for a cab

I contend that American Unhappiness is manufactured and sustained by the constant onslaught of misinformation, broadcast by special interest groups, all of whom have it in their general plan to make you feel an unmet need, a base emotional response, a tickle in your amygdla.

Likely, your life is not that bad.

Likely, the fear you feel, waiting for a cab outside your favorite bistro, is a response to programming you ingested from the culture that tries to nurse you into a permanent state of semi-consciousness.

Fear is sensational, a proven sales tool, a political football, click-bait 'journalism'. There are whole armies of professional and amateur fear-mongers out there, who make it their life's mission to plant the seeds of fear into your imagination, to sell you a product, a candidate, a policy.

>> fulfillment requires more than material wealth,

Agreed, but...

>> which in our quest for more stuff, we have forgotten.

Reject the programming. Whether it is fear or desire that the advertisers/liars attempt to trigger in you, recognize the effort aimed at making you feel wants/needs that do not actually do you or our society any good at all, and reject the unhappiness they are trying to program into you.

It is an individual responsibility. An individual has authority over their own emotional states. Defend yourself from the onslaught of lies and liars.

> Society needs to feel safe for people to truly feel happy.

I don't disagree with this. But whose is responsible for 'feelings'?

Is the United States more prone to misinformation and special interest groups than other countries?

Yes. The forced two-party system inevitably leads to an us-versus-them mentality. Everything gets divided into Good Things done by Us, and Bad Things done by Them. There's no room for nuance, everything has to be pushed to the extremes in order to get a handful of voters to flip.

In a healthy democracy with at least a handful of political parties the small groups of lunatics aren't going to poison the entire spectrum: they are mostly contained into the tiny extremist parties served by heavily biased extremist media. The vast majority of the population, however, is served by more moderate parties and more neutral media - where misinformation and blatant corruption is heavily frowned upon.

Turns out when people have a genuine alternative, they don't just stick with whatever shit they are trying to pull this time just because "the other guy is even worse".

And of course we are also the largest global target.

Not even remotely close.

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