Dear Dalrymple,

Magnifico...hilarious. Damn near fell off my computer chair while reading it. Many thanks.

Yours,

Ron Minihan

Dr Darlymple,

I think there's a small group of us for whom the desire to possess a Vermeer transcends all other desires. Knowing that you can't find a Vermeer at a Salvation Army store made the desire all the more painful.

I've spent many a day and many a night trying to figure out how I could steal one Vermeer from the National Gallery of Art in DC, though I can go and see the paintings every day (I work in the neighborhood, a couple of blocks away). Yet, nothing would match the thrill  I'd have by possessing  the Girl with the Red Hat all for myself, or any other Vermeer.

Cosumption is symbolic, a matter of preference, as Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood have shown many years ago.

Well, maybe Dr Dalrymple is right but I consider myself an evironmentalist, though that could mean various things, basically I prefer not to think (as TD anticipates) 'the machine' is as he believes i.e. I don't think Growth Without Prosperity by Tim Jackson is entirely in vain. And deforestation, and over fishing? So much of it just strikes me as insane and that much could be done to change it - who knows?

Grapefruit juice freezes very nicely.

"Who is wise? He who is happy with what he has." - Ethics of the Fathers, Chapter 4.

OK, so things own us more than we own things, our desires are manufactured by marketers etc.  But it's also true that fridges are made by workers who support families and nature is super-abundant, and so why not also the human arts which immitate nature?  Need we mourn the old refrigerator and the leaf which falls from the tree? 

Joe Bissonnette

I've long been trying to find someone to tell me "what is art?".  Your short paragraph on Thomas Jones goes a long way toward filling that void.

I'm not really moved by trying to connect happiness with material goods, or wealth.  Counterexamples usually find their way into the tabloids, all too often.

The closest I've gotten is the thought that what our Founding Fathers (I'm American) meant by "the pursuit of happiness".  Clearly, they didn't have in mind a nation of grinning, chuckling automata.  Being schooled in the classics, they most likely meant a Socratic definition of happiness.  (His definition escapes me, but I'm positive it didn't include Croseus. But, unlike Socrates, I'm not about to wait until after I die to find out if I've been happy.)

Maybe it's simpler than we think.  As Winston Churchill is sadi to have said, "happiness is a good cigar".

"But it's also true that fridges are made by workers who support families"

But the fridges contain the junk food that support the more important 'families'.

"and nature is super-abundant"

Would it matter if it wasn't? Or that aspects of nature crucial to human wellbeing weren't?

It may only take the collapse of the Honey Bee to put a damper on proceedings - and actually their decline has already done so.

Yes, I meant 'Prosperity Without Growth' though for growth might be better to read 'Unsustainable Throughput'.

I am in full agreement, sir, with your remarks-which didnt happen the first time- except that my grocery store doesnt reward me with discount for more grapefruit juice.However, gives me rebate on wine...

Actually, I agree with much that was said. But the following para was disturbing because of its blindness to how declines in per capita GDP are not distributed on a per capita basis. The measure is not one of per capita distribution of suffering.

"The para is: As literary theorists might put it, ‘the subtext’ of this is that the declines in per capita GDP experienced in European countries as a result of the economic crisis are nothing much to worry about, since those countries have long since reached the level of consumption at which increases add nothing to happiness. A decrease of ten per cent, say, takes us back to the levels of about four, five or six years ago, when nobody was remarking on the terrible suffering caused by the poverty of the mass of the population."

The declines tend to be felt by those least able to provide food, clothing, or shelter for themselves.

Pedant that I am....autarky, not autarchy, we're talking about self-reliance, not absolute power.

On the larger point, the bit that the happiness economists miss (Skidelsky being only one, Layard another), is that while the absolute level of wealth, over and above better than subsistence (the number usually used is around $15,000 per head per year) doesn't have much effect upon happiness the rate and direction of change of that level do have large effects.

This is why the machine must continue to expand: not because more wealth makes us happier, but that the increase in wealth does so, just as a decrease or static level makes us unhappy.

1. As to used refrigerators.  They make admirable wine storage units, with the right modifications, set at 50 - 55 degrees F.  They can also be used to store apples and cheeses.

2. We all get used to the machine; so did the ancients, who depended on particular markets and the availability of produce, meat and fish.  That's the price of division of labor.  Without the machine, each of us would have to be self-sufficient, which is impossible, or live in small hunting/gatherer groups.

3. Your wants and wishes (some call them needs) are far beyond what the Pharoahs had because of all this.  But they needn't control your life.  A tiny bit of desire for more when you "leave the table" is good for you.  It keeps you healthy.