The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Politics

Democracy and how we govern

  • Gross Happiness Product

    Mike pointed me to an article in Wired on how GDP is failing as a national success indicator.

    Since the time of Adam Smith, we’ve used the wealth of nations as a proxy for the well-being of nations. We measure whether life is getting better by checking whether the good numbers (GDP, personal incomes, and so on) are going up and the bad numbers (unemployment, inflation, and so on) are going down. However, over the past half century, something strange has happened. The US’s per capita GDP – the value of all the goods and services a nation produces divided by its population – has nearly tripled, but American well-being hasn’t budged. We’ve grown almost three times richer but not one jot happier. There’s ample evidence that in all postindustrial societies, material wealth and broader happiness are no longer closely in sync.

    Yep!

    I’d actually take it one step further: GDP growth probably causes a decline in happiness, since GDP growth means people are focused on increasing production. And increased production makes noone happier. That takes something else entirely.

  • Shared space – in traffic and at work

    Danish media have been kicking up a storm lately about all the anarchistic bicycle riders (primarily in Copenhagen) who ignore traffic rules. The debate has been founded on an interesting but unstated premise that traffic safety comes from always following the rules. As long as you go by the book, nothin bad can happen to you.

    Well, according to this NYTimes article, dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman has a rather different approach: Throw away the book. He designed:

    a busy intersection in the center of town… Not only was it virtually naked, stripped of all lights, signs and road markings, but there was no division between road and sidewalk. It was, basically, a bare brick square.

    But in spite of the apparently anarchical layout, the traffic, a steady stream of trucks, cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, moved along fluidly and easily, as if directed by an invisible conductor. When Mr. Monderman, a traffic engineer and the intersection’s proud designer, deliberately failed to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the street, the drivers slowed for him. No one honked or shouted rude words out of the window.

    (more…)

  • Attacking the staus quo

    Clay Shirky talks about folksonomies (community generated taxonomies) and then comes up with this BRILLIANT quote, which can be applied to just about any area:

    We need a word for the class of comparisons that assumes that the status quo is cost-free, so that all new work, when it can be shown to have disadvantages to the status quo, is also assumed to be inferior to the status quo.

    Yes, yes, YES! The status quo ain’t free!

  • The rise of open-source politics

    Politics today is mostly top-down. The parties/candidates and their advisors define the politics and the message, often not by talking to people but through polls.

    …top-down politics is all about maintaining control. “Think of an established brand with a lot invested in control of its image,” … “The idea of opening that up is scary.”

    But maybe we’re seeing a shift away from that towards open source politics. In an excellent article on the nation, Micah Sifry looks at the rise of open source politics:

    Using open-source coding as a model, it’s not a stretch to believe the same process could make politics more representative and fair. Imagine, for example, how a grassroots network could take over some of the duties normally performed by high-priced consultants who try to shape a campaign message that’s appealing. If the people receiving the message create it, chances are it’s much more likely to stir up passions.

    Here’s my favourite quote from the article:

    In the same way that TV took politics away from the grassroots, the Internet will give it back.

    I’m really fired up by this vision, which melds perfectly with my dream of an open space-based political party. I think the internet can be an excellent medium, especially combined with regular meetings in physical space also. Something happens when people get together in the same room at the same time with a purpose that doesn’t as readily happen on-line.

  • What if..?

    Here’s an idea for future elections – in America or anywhere else:

    What if you as a candidate went out and fully acknowledged the voters’ right to vote for the other guy? If you could campaign in a way that was fully appreciative of the results achieved by your opponent(s)? What if you refrained completely from spin and stuck to the facts? What if your intention was not to make people vote for you, but rather to supply people with the information needed to make their decision?

    One day, when I’m prime minister of Denmark, this is how I’ll have run my campaign :o)

  • Arts – politics, 1 – 0

    There’s an EU election on right now, and though it’s met mostly with apathy and boredom, someone has used the (butt ugly) election posters pasted all over Copenhagen for some good, and made weird little art projects out of them – quite good ones too. Check out a few:

    EU Politics never made this much sense to me before.

  • Measuring happiness

    Mike Wagner pointed me to this article in Business 2.0 on measuring happiness.

    Does money really buy happiness? Not in Japan, apparently. Even the United States, the alleged capital of materialism, is not nearly as happy as its per capita income suggests it should be. Colombians and Costa Ricans, on the other hand, claim a level of satisfaction with their lives that is totally out of proportion with their income.

  • Prison food

    An article in The Economist talks about an experiment in which inmates in a british prison were given extra vitamins, minerals and fatty oils.

    Bernard Gesch, a researcher at Oxford University, wanted to see if bringing inmates’ consumption of various vitamins, minerals and fatty acids (the stuff found in fish oil) up to recommended daily levels would affect their behaviour…

    Half of the offenders received daily nutritional supplements, and the rest placebo pills. The two groups included a comparable mix of anxious, depressed and aggressive individuals. Their antisocial antics?ranging from violent assaults to swearing at the guards?were recorded before and during the experiment.

    The results, published in the July issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, are striking. Those on supplements committed 25% fewer offences than those taking placebos. Moreover, with at least two weeks’ ?treatment?, inmates receiving supplements committed 35% fewer offences than before starting the trial, compared with a 7% reduction in those taking placebos.

    Well, duh! Of course it matters what you eat. Of course you get cranky if your body isn’t functioning optimally, because your diet is wrong.

    I had the pleasure of visiting Denmarks biggest prison a few months ago to talk about happiness at work with the prison guards, and I saw the food they served there: Awful! We’re talking old school, meat and gravy style food for both the prisoners and the guards. I’m certain that the conditions could be improved all around with something as simple as better food.

  • The 4th. sector

    I was at a conference monday on the fourth sector. In case you haven’t heard about this term, the fourth sector is a way of organizing that combines the best of the three existing sectors, ie. private industry, governments and volunteer organizations.

    Fourth sector organizations compete in the market like private companies, they work for a good cause and they often rely on a high degree of volunteerism.

    And this is precisely true of the happy at work project. We make our money just like any other consulting company out there (we haven’t recieved a dime of public money, and we don’t want any). We strive to make people happy at work. That’s why we’re here. And we’re a volunteer organization, where everyone interested can join and contribute towards the cause.

    The conference was arranged by my good friends over at grasshoppers.dk and was refreshingly different, with nice little touches like a clown welcoming guests and yoga-breaks throughout.

    My main learning from the conference was, that the term “fourth sector” is flawed. There is no new sector and the organizations exhibiting fourth sector traits are found in the traditional three sectors. A fine example would be Kjaer Group, a danish company comitted to “making a difference”. They’re definitely a private company making money in the market, but they also work to make a difference in the world, individually and together.

    So rather than being a matter of sector it’s a matter of intent or approach. Here’s my definition of a fourth sector organization:
    A fourth sector organization, is one that does not see a contradiction between making a profit, improving the world and working voluntarily.

    So all we need now is a better term than “fourth sector”. Any ideas?

  • Niels Bohr’s nuclear weapons policy redeemed

    The NY Times has an interesting article on the current policies of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Some people advocate openness (an some even practice it like Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist.

    The article points out, that this situation was essentially foreseen by Niels Bohr, the nobel prize winning physicist who is the father of quantum physics. Niels Bohr has long been one of my heroes. He is one of the few people who managed to live a life that was both great and happy. He was a deep thinker who got things done. A nice and thoughtful person who never talked badly of others. A man of strong intuition who was never afraid to think new thoughts.

    Immediately following World War II, he shocked a lot of people, incuding Winston Churchill, by suggesting that the west share nuclear weapons technology with the Soviet Union. He predicted, that the result of not doing so would be an arms and technology race that would bring the world in danger, saying
    We are in a completely new situation… The terrible prospect of a future competition between nations about a weapon of such formidable character can only be avoided through a universal agreement.’

    The people in power wouldn’t listen (Churchill is reported to have been really annoyed with this addle-headed scientist and his rosy vision of international collaboration) and the cold war followed.

    I admire Bohr for being willing to propose such an idea at such a time. He believed he was right, and worked for his ideals. I also admire him for having the genius to realize, that the answer to avoiding a nuclear arms race (either between superpowers or, even scarier, between rogue nations) is not unilateral action, that this can only come from global cooperation – exactly what the worlds leaders are realizing today.