Happinessential - Village Magazine

VILLAGEApril/May 

economics as a well-tested but progressive

and adaptable science. Smith demands that

social and environmental imperatives dis-

place the supreme position that economics,

as a by-product of, and advocate for our

materialistic society, has assumed for the

past  years.

In the end, all public policy strategies

– as well as research priorities – require

N their articles covering the merits

and demerits of economics in the last

edition of Village both Michael Smith

and Constantin Gurdgiev miss the point.

The question, in my view, is not which of

the social or empirical sciences can best

measure and deliver public goods (e.g.

environmental improvements, welfare,

fairness, etc). The real issue is whether

happiness can be viewed as an over-arching

social and political aspiration and a legiti-

mate goal of public policy. And secondly, if it

can, the measures we can legitimately take

to achieve such policy goals.

Both writers bemoan the short-sighted,

bad decision-making which is having dev-

astating consequences on our local and

broader environments. Gurdgiev defends

POLITICS

Also in this section:

Devaluing university degrees 52

Community development under

threat 54

priceless?

How might public policy reﬂect the claims of all social sciences to ‘Truth About

How Things Work’. Sadhbh O’Neill replies to the debate between Constantin

Gurdgiev and Michael Smith (Village Feb-March)

Happinessential

April/May VILLAGE

a political justiﬁcation in the sense of

representing the outcome of a broad soci-

etal debate. No policy decision should be

exempt from this demand of legitimacy, and

Gurdgiev rightly critiques the approach of

throwing money at environmental problems

to make the numbers right (CO emissions;

renewables’ targets), without adequate

detailed analysis of environmental and

social costs, or transfers of beneﬁts and

costs from one part of society to another.

Macro-ecological ﬁxes are as doomed to

fail as macro-economic ones, if the infor-

mation guiding decisions is inadequate or

blind-sighted, and if the necessary second-

guessing and critique is stymied by political

or professional bias.

Of course science and scientists will say

they can do better policy than politicians,

if given the right funding and platforms to

be heard. And of course environmentalists

will say that no single disciplinary or insti-

tutional discourse should be privileged over

any other, or over the heads of citizens who

will ultimately live with the impacts of poor

decisions. The unique and complex problems

that are presented by the environmental

crisis require that we instil a new ethical

priority of meeting human needs above the

demands of capital in all our scientiﬁc and

political discourse. But this is sadly lacking,

and the fragmentary approach to environ-

mental policy is only compounded by the

disinterest shown by mainstream politics

in adopting a long-range, sustainable vision

for society.

Gurdgiev, probably reﬂecting the frus-

tration of all independent economists,

rails against the propaganda machine of

the Department of Finance, but it is hard to

see how things could be any diﬀerent with-

out a democratisation of the discipline of

economics itself. If there is one good out-

come from the ﬁnancial crash, it is that we

are all more ﬁnancially and economically

literate than we used to be. However, that

does not mean we will get our say, or that

if we did, our ideas would be implemented.

The intellectual division of labour that we

have in modern democratic states means

that public bodies do not even need to have

the capacity to make good decisions: some-

one else out there can provide the necessary

justiﬁcation either before or after a decision

is taken as required.

Starting from this, albeit pessimistic,

standpoint, what can we possibly do to bring

more cohesion and holism to public policy?

How might public policy better reﬂect the

tenuous and contingent claims of all social

sciences to being the Truth About How

Things Really Work? How might it be made

more ecocentric, more humanistic, without

falling into the narrowly ideological trap of

utopianism or being overly prescriptive?

Smith advocates what environmental-

ists have been looking for over the past

few decades – policy measures should be

tested against a series of environmental and

social indicators before being implemented.

However that will no longer be enough in

my view. It is essential that we bring more

scientiﬁc depth and rigour to ecological

issues and debates, and Gurdgiev’s case for

the potentially enlightening role of econom-

ics is persuasive.

But only if it does not further disempower

the public. The complexity of environmen-

tal problems means that almost all debates

bypass both the political class and the elec-

torate or simply fail to happen at all. This is

not only undemocratic but dangerous, given

the continuing and destructive forces of cap-

italism at work in our world.

It is only when relatively superﬁcial, and

highly visible, environmental interventions

are proposed (regardless of whether it is

“good” or “bad” almost all environmental

infrastructure is unpopular) that the pub-

lic is given an opportunity to articulate an

opinion about the future of a local com-

munity, commons or locality. The bigger

picture: our addictive over-consumption of

resources and loss of natural wealth, barely

gets a mention.

So where Smith does get it right, then, is

in his implied demand that environmental

and social goals should be more clearly and

simply articulated.

Public policy should aim to improve

quality of life and human happiness, it

should be ecologically sensitive and easily

understood.

If this were truly the case, the impacts of

policy, good or bad, should be empirically

veriﬁable beyond (much) dispute. While this

is indeed a political aspiration, it might be

suﬃciently over-arching to allow for many

alternative political styles and priorities so

that all political actors should be able to sign

up to these principles. It also needs to be a

set of aspirations that other social actors

including corporate and civic groups can

ﬁnd acceptable without feeling that they

are assuming a political role beyond their

remit.

It is reasonable to ask, “well, how can

we know what will make people happy?”.

Is the pursuit of happiness not an entirely

personal responsibility? What business does

the state have in making people happy, as

opposed to wealthy/ healthy/ productive?

Interestingly much research has been con-

ducted in recent years which has noted the

rise in emotional distress (stress, depres-

sion, low self-esteem) that accompanies

materialistic and competitive values in

developed societies. Income disparity is

ranked as one of the top causes of unhappi-

ness, and societies with progressive income

tax regimes such as Denmark are noted to

have stronger community bonds across all

social strata. While the links between hap-

piness and economic growth have been

challenged by Irish researchers such as Tony

Fahey, there is no doubt that one of the clear

features of modern life is a tendency we all

have to internalise social malaise. In other

words, we tend to scapegoat and blame our-

selves for injustices completely beyond our

control, and we don’t see the political and

ideological backdrop to the bad decisions

that aﬀect our lives. Whether it

is bad planning, unemployment

or poor access to services, we are

encouraged by economists to

think of such diﬃculties as mar-

ket failures rather than focus on

the real suﬀering and hardship

bad policy can bring to the lives

of individuals. The diﬃculty

researchers face in providing

objective data for subjective

mental states such as happiness

should not blind us to our pub-

lic duty to promote well-being,

happiness and social cohesion

beyond the utilitarian principle

of maximising welfare, which is

already challenging enough to achieve.

What this means is that there are speciﬁc

things we should do to lessen people’s emo-

tional distress and promote social cohesion

as an end-in-itself (and not for instrumen-

talist purposes like making the labour-force

more productive). Generous provision of

public services and spaces would be viewed

under the Happiness principle less as cost

or a burden to society, and more as the ﬁnal

goal of public policy. Tax policy too might be

viewed diﬀerently: taxes/ aid would support

policy rather than improve the functioning

of the market.

An economist might retort “but what’s

the diﬀerence? It all amounts to the same set

of measures anyhow”, but the truth is that

it very often doesn’t. The language of the

economist is quantitative rather than quali-

tative for the most part, and many political

and social variables are omitted from anal-

ysis not just because they are variable, but

ultimately unmeasurable. Instead of trying

to come up with a way of measuring irra-

tional behaviour, it might make more sense

to accept the limits to economic analysis and

hand the debate back to the rest of us. •

What business

does the state

have in making

people happy,

as opposed

to wealthy/

healthy/

productive?

“