The Illusion of Well-Being

In the previous chapter, I explained why the advantages of using happiness or subjective well-being as measures of general well-being for economics and policymaking purposes are exaggerated. Happiness is far too vague and multifaceted an idea to be accurately and precisely measured and used for policymaking purposes. Furthermore, happiness is not the same as well-being in general, which is what most scholars and policymakers try to influence—but does the concept of well-being fare any better than happiness does?

Over the last two chapters, we’ve examined a number of approaches to measuring well-being, from the standard but maligned gross domestic product, to more recent calls for an accounting of happiness, and finally to the economists’ favorite, preference satisfaction. We saw that each has its own specific problems in conception, practice, and policy, but one thing they all share is that they define well-being for the people whose well-being is being measured. This is no problem for advocates of objective versions of well-being, who normally make no claim to any level of subjectivity—though we’ll see there are exceptions to this—but this limits how deeply subjective measures like happiness and preference satisfaction can be. These measures depend on people to report their feelings or choices, which is subjective, but they do not leave people free to define their own conception of well-being—that’s up to the researchers, who decide whether they are measuring hedonic pleasure, life satisfaction, or preferences. In short, these measures are assessed subjectively but defined objectively.

In the previous chapter we saw that people’s interests, the entirety of what matters to them and motivates their choices, are impossible for outside observers to specify or measure because they are multifaceted, complex, and inherently subjective. People cannot accurately describe or report their own interests, much less those of anybody else or of an entire population. Furthermore, even if we could identify what a person’s interests consist of, it is difficult enough to measure the quantifiable aspects of interests, such as well-being, without considering the qualitative aspects such as principles and ideals—never mind determining how a person balances this multitude of factors in specific decision-making contexts according to his or her unique judgment.

While I did not write this book to bury anybody, I do want to put to rest two very dangerous and pernicious ideas: that our government knows how we should run our lives better than we do, and that it has the right or responsibility to do it for us.