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 more than this is entirely down to people paying over the odds to show they have money to burn. Or not realizing that their clothing budget has reached the point where they should just stop trying to find nicer things in the shops and get everything tailored.
I self taught sewing via the internet and deconstructing worn out bits of my wardrobe. Which led to 2 hilarious realizations. 1: jeans are the pinnacle of industrial clothing production. All the seams are done right, the edges are folded in so nothing can unravel, the stress points are reinforced, the sizing system makes actual sense, and the cloth is basically indestructible. And they are cheap.
2; Everything else. And I do mean every single other item of clothing that I owned that had been bought in a shop? Soddy manufacture. Things that cost easily 3 times as much as a pair of jeans were manufactured to nowhere near as high a standard. And looking at the detail work in more upscale establishments than I usually buy at indicate that doesn’t actually change much at all going up the price scale.
And this is for mens wear. The things people foist on women make me want to cry.
the buttons on a high end suit can cost much more than 10 euro. First hit on amazon for mother of pearl buttons is $36, and I’m sure there are more expensive materials in use. Likewise for fabric, I think. Do you need these things? No. But they exist, and you can pay for them.
Also typically the cost of clothing approximately doubles every times it changes hands, so if cost of product was $500, the retailer might pay $1000, and the consumer might pay $2000.
High fashion really is expensive just to be expensive, though.
The interesting thing is not even that high fashion is largely meant to signal wealth. People could be wearing some random tracksuit and show of their wealth with jewelry—that is actually a saner investment resales value wise. But that would be called “ghetto”, “not classy”, largely because it is so obvious.
High fashion is for people who want to show off wealth while not looking like someone who wants to show off wealth. Counter-signalling—people trying to look like someone who does not need to look wealthy anymore, because the people who do are middle class and these people are one level higher.
But since even this is too obvious, about 10-15 years ago a new category of people (I think it overlaps a lot with the category called “hipsters”) emerged who purposefully try to look poor / not conventionally rich and yet you can guess they have money because they always have the latest iProducts.
People could be wearing some random tracksuit and show of their wealth with jewelry—that is actually a saner investment resales value wise. But that would be called “ghetto”, “not classy”, largely because it is so obvious.
Men can wear expensive watches and women in high fashion do wear expensive jewelry.
Besides that a tailored item is a better signal for wealth than jewelry that can be loaned for an important event.
Shorter, clearer point: past a certain price point, buying clothes in shops is daft—Anything which you buy off rack is going to be strictly inferior in terms of fit and construction to the tailored version, so once you pass the price point where you could elect to patronize a tailor, the only possible reason to spend more money is status signaling. With a side order of signaling one does not grasp how to spend money correctly.
Personally I sew everything other than jeans. Hmm. You know what, I need a new suit or two anyway. This should make a funny blog post in about 2 weeks.
I’m not sure that’s quite the same as the hedonic treadmill. In a hedonic treadmill, your happiness stays roughly constant. But in a “futile dreams” situation, you’re actually getting less and less happy with time.
I’m not sure if the idea in the post is a reformulation of hedonic treadmill. In a hedonic treadmill, your happiness level stays constant, but in a “futile dreams” situation you’re actually becoming less and less happy over time.
Maybe you can learn to appreciate an “ordinary” life. It’s just that I usually prefer solutions that involve physical actions and changes (however stupid) to solutions that involve introspection, because the gains of introspection often go away in the morning and you’re just as unhappy as you were. YMMV.
Others have written about the “hedonic treadmill” here.
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.
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 more than this is entirely down to people paying over the odds to show they have money to burn. Or not realizing that their clothing budget has reached the point where they should just stop trying to find nicer things in the shops and get everything tailored.
I self taught sewing via the internet and deconstructing worn out bits of my wardrobe. Which led to 2 hilarious realizations.
1: jeans are the pinnacle of industrial clothing production. All the seams are done right, the edges are folded in so nothing can unravel, the stress points are reinforced, the sizing system makes actual sense, and the cloth is basically indestructible. And they are cheap.
2; Everything else. And I do mean every single other item of clothing that I owned that had been bought in a shop? Soddy manufacture. Things that cost easily 3 times as much as a pair of jeans were manufactured to nowhere near as high a standard. And looking at the detail work in more upscale establishments than I usually buy at indicate that doesn’t actually change much at all going up the price scale. And this is for mens wear. The things people foist on women make me want to cry.
the buttons on a high end suit can cost much more than 10 euro. First hit on amazon for mother of pearl buttons is $36, and I’m sure there are more expensive materials in use. Likewise for fabric, I think. Do you need these things? No. But they exist, and you can pay for them.
Also typically the cost of clothing approximately doubles every times it changes hands, so if cost of product was $500, the retailer might pay $1000, and the consumer might pay $2000.
High fashion really is expensive just to be expensive, though.
The interesting thing is not even that high fashion is largely meant to signal wealth. People could be wearing some random tracksuit and show of their wealth with jewelry—that is actually a saner investment resales value wise. But that would be called “ghetto”, “not classy”, largely because it is so obvious.
High fashion is for people who want to show off wealth while not looking like someone who wants to show off wealth. Counter-signalling—people trying to look like someone who does not need to look wealthy anymore, because the people who do are middle class and these people are one level higher.
But since even this is too obvious, about 10-15 years ago a new category of people (I think it overlaps a lot with the category called “hipsters”) emerged who purposefully try to look poor / not conventionally rich and yet you can guess they have money because they always have the latest iProducts.
Men can wear expensive watches and women in high fashion do wear expensive jewelry.
Besides that a tailored item is a better signal for wealth than jewelry that can be loaned for an important event.
Shorter, clearer point: past a certain price point, buying clothes in shops is daft—Anything which you buy off rack is going to be strictly inferior in terms of fit and construction to the tailored version, so once you pass the price point where you could elect to patronize a tailor, the only possible reason to spend more money is status signaling. With a side order of signaling one does not grasp how to spend money correctly. Personally I sew everything other than jeans. Hmm. You know what, I need a new suit or two anyway. This should make a funny blog post in about 2 weeks.
Tailoring assumes unchanging weight/shape.
Do you have an opinion on http://outlier.cc/ clothing?
I’m not sure that’s quite the same as the hedonic treadmill. In a hedonic treadmill, your happiness stays roughly constant. But in a “futile dreams” situation, you’re actually getting less and less happy with time.
I’m not sure if the idea in the post is a reformulation of hedonic treadmill. In a hedonic treadmill, your happiness level stays constant, but in a “futile dreams” situation you’re actually becoming less and less happy over time.
Maybe you can learn to appreciate an “ordinary” life. It’s just that I usually prefer solutions that involve physical actions and changes (however stupid) to solutions that involve introspection, because the gains of introspection often go away in the morning and you’re just as unhappy as you were. YMMV.