The Economics of Happiness

For every person who has gained a rupee, there is a person who has lost one. For every business thats at profit, there is one which is at an equal loss. Can the same rule be extended to happiness?? What exactly would this mean?? For every person who becomes happy at a certain instant, would there be someone who is becoming sad as a result??

Disclaimer:
I dont have a clue what makes me think of such things. But for those who are still interested in this. Read on!!

There is one major obstacle that I face while tackling this problem. While money was a determinate quantity, happiness is not. While we can measure the amount of money one has, we cant measure how happy a person is. So lets assume a thing, if something good/desirable happens, then it is considered a happy event and vice versa.

Now let us apply this to a few specific cases:

1) Classroom Situation: Student A scores full marks in the test(out of 15). And he is the only person in the class who has done this.

Analysis: From our assumption, we can conclude that A's happiness quotient would increase. Lets see what happens to the others. For simpler understanding, lets divide the students based on the kind of marks that they have scored.

a) Students who have scored 14 and above: Most of the students will be happy with their scores. But there will be a select few who will be a little sad/frustrated because they have lost a chance to score full marks thanks to a very silly/miniscule error in their test.

b) Students between 10-14: Most of them will know that they can reach the elite category easily, and cross the thin line that exists between them and students of category (a). Some will be inspired, some will be satisfied, while some will be sad for sure because of the gap in performance despite the negligible gap in ability.

c) Students < 10: I dont think we need to consider this category because I really dont think they are worthy of comparison with both A and the students of category (a).

Conclusion: Happiness does lead to sadness.

2) Same as situation A. Only difference is that there are many people who have scored full marks in their test.

There is only one category of students that are worth consideration here. They are the many students who have scored in the 12-14 range who are feeling worse than they would have felt otherwise because of the number of people who have scored full marks.

Conclusion: Happiness leads to sadness, again.

Consider any other happening, there would always be someone sad for someone happy, some masochists for some sybarites and so on.. All this is a part of the intricate balance that is inherent in nature. Another reason I can think of is man's insatiable appetite for things he can do without, which keeps him whining all the time. There is no shortage of whiners in this world!! (Take the Arsenal football team for a start!! Man U rocks!!)

Consider a Utopian world in which everyone was happy. No one would even know what sadness felt like. Would the terms sadness and happiness even exist?? No. These are just causal responses by the human mind/heart to the surrounding conditions. Most people keep complaining about the vegetated lifestyles that they lead, but know one thing for a fact, our lives would be most boring without all this. I still don't know what made me write this post, but I ended up writing this for public viewing though I totally know for a fact that this would make sense only to very small section of readers. A similar analogy can be applied to the news channels of today, which thrive on delivering sensational news stories rather than stories which are morally/politically more important.

The earth, as created had everything in balance(Except Entropy, of course which keeps increasing!!!). Unfortunately man seems to be disrupting it, thanks to his promiscuous behaviour(Water, Energy etc to name a few). I have full faith in the disruptive powers of the human race, that there will be a time when even Emotional balance would be put to test. Very soon..