
Destroying happiness - nreece
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/destroying-happ.html
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Goladus
Any happiness related to interpersonal human relationships have not likely
changed much over time.

Did Hamlet's unhappiness have anything to do with his standard of living?

If someone asked me why people today aren't happier, then, after pointing out
the hidden presumption that is at best a huge oversimplification and at worst
completely wrong (are "people" _really_ not any happier now than in 17th
century France?), I'd say it's probably because people are still selfish and
cruel to each other.

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anamax
I predict that if Obama wins, happiness will increase.

Why? Because the current "things are horrible" news reporting will be replaced
by "things are getting better" even if said things don't change at all.

We saw this at the beginning of Clinton's first term. "We're in a recession"
became "we're in a recovery" after Clinton took office even though the
recovery started well before said election.

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sh1mmer
I'm curious how journalist measure happiness over time. Especially how they
assess the happiness of people who lived in a time before social
anthropologists to study the well-being of a society.

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cousin_it
Good insight. Surprisingly deep when you start thinking: it shows that
sometimes marketing becomes a negative-sum game due to externalities. Will it
lead Seth to question his career choice?

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gasull
He said that marketers that focus on _maintaining_ market share remind us that
we are happy.

He proposes to focus on maintaining a market share, in the long tail, instead
of mass marketing and making everybody unhappy unless they have the last piece
of fancy crap.

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cousin_it
What proportion of ads you see are for things you already use? It doesn't
balance out. I guess most things are not used by more than 50% of the ad's
audience.

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gasull
Obviously you don't usually read Seth Godin. He is against advertisement as we
know it. Marketing is more than advertisement. Take a look at his main posts
and his Wikipedia page.

