Others have written about the "hedonic treadmill" here.
1) People who live in developed Western countries usually make and spend much more money than people in poorer countries, but aren't that much happier. It feels like we're overpaying for happiness, spending too much money to get a single bit of enjoyment.
It's worth saying explicitly that we are, nevertheless, happier.
The efficiency goes down (hence that "happy planet index" linked to), but to my eyes this looks like nothing more than ordinary diminishing returns, which affect many things we might want to invest in. (Unfortunately that suggests there's no easy answer).
I think a lot of these effects are genuine: a $3000 dollar suit is only as much better than a $300 suit as a $300 suit is than a $30 suit, and sure some of that is signalling but I think most of it is that it takes a lot of skilled human labour to make the difference between a quite nice suit and a super nice suit.
Sooo... if you like eating, give yourself a break every once in a while? If you like comfort, maybe get a cold shower sometimes? Might be a good idea to make yourself the kind of person that can get happiness cheaply.
Maybe, but I'd like to see evidence before recommending this. My instinct is that it's possible to learn to appreciate an "ordinary" life, and that this would probably provide more overall pleasure than the boom-and-bust cycle you seem to be advocating. But it would be good to have some actual numbers.
The high end of clothing is pretty much entirely veblen pricing - I sew for a hobby, and the maximally nice suit would cost: 6 meters of high-end wool fabric: 120 euro. 5 meters of silk for lining: 70 euro. Bits and bobs (Buttons, ect) 10. Doing the whole thing without shortcuts (French seams, double stitching).. 15 hours? For me. An actual tailor is likely faster, but even at first world wages, its another 300 euro, max, so totals out to 500 euro. Sanity checking this by looking up the local tailors rates for a suit... yup, 500 to 800.
Any suit costing ...
Happy New Year, everyone!
In the past few months I've been thinking several thoughts that all seem to point in the same direction:
1) People who live in developed Western countries usually make and spend much more money than people in poorer countries, but aren't that much happier. It feels like we're overpaying for happiness, spending too much money to get a single bit of enjoyment.
2) When you get enjoyment from something, the association between "that thing" and "pleasure" in your mind gets stronger, but at the same time it becomes less sensitive and requires more stimulus. For example if you like sweet food, you can get into a cycle of eating more and more food that's sweeter and sweeter. But the guy next door, who's eating much less and periodically fasting to keep the association fresh, is actually getting more pleasure from food than you are! The same thing happens when you learn to deeply appreciate certain kinds of art, and then notice that the folks who enjoy "low" art are visibly having more fun.
3) People sometimes get unrealistic dreams and endlessly chase them, like trying to "make it big" in writing or sports, because they randomly got rewarded for it at an early age. I wrote a post about that.
I'm not offering any easy answers here. But it seems like too many people get locked in loops where they spend more and more effort to get less and less happiness. The most obvious examples are drug addiction and video gaming, but also "one-itis" in dating, overeating, being a connoisseur of anything, striving for popular success, all these things follow the same pattern. You're just chasing after some Skinner-box thing that you think you "love", but it doesn't love you back.
Sooo... if you like eating, give yourself a break every once in a while? If you like comfort, maybe get a cold shower sometimes? Might be a good idea to make yourself the kind of person that can get happiness cheaply.
Sorry if this post is not up to LW standards, I typed it really quickly as it came to my mind.