How Terrible is the Happiness Industrial Complex?

Let me share a short story about reading an article that annoyed me.

Andy Kessler wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The Happiness Industrial Complex” (Inside View, July 26)

It is a strange article suggesting that trying to measure happiness is futile. He argues that happiness is immeasurable, which mirrors what one United States senator once said about love.

In March 1975, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire announced the first winner of his Golden Fleece Award, a publicity stunt designed to expose preposterous government spending. His inaugural target was the National Science Foundation for awarding $84,000 to University of Minnesota psychologist Ellen Berscheid (who is amazing - LINK). Her actual research examined psychological dependence, interpersonal attraction, and how fairness operates within romantic relationships. Proxmire repackaged this as taxpayers handing over $84,000 to discover why people fall in love. He declared that no amount of money would produce an answer anyone believed and, besides, Americans preferred love to remain a mystery. This is a remarkable standard for deciding what deserves scientific attention. Leave the complicated parts of human existence to poets and bartenders, and only fund research on questions an arbitrary senator already understands.

A Chicago newspaper asked readers to vote on whether Proxmire or Dr. Berscheid was right in a ridiculous audience call-in contest. Proxmire won with 87.5%% of the vote. Science had been defeated by people near telephones. The lesson received by other scientists was to avoid studying risky topics. The weird part about this government overreach is that even a partial understanding of romantic love, marriage, disillusionment, and divorce might qualify as a spectacular return on federal investment, especially if lean conservative and really want intact, healthy, fertile families. Since this stain, relationship scientists learned how attraction forms, why relationships deteriorate, how partners affect one another’s health, and what separates a combustible romance from a bond that can outlast the loss of a child. The subject was measurable after all. The measurements were imperfect, then improved, which is what happens when scientists are allowed to continue doing science.

Read the full story - HERE

Half a century later, the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler serves the same argument. Happiness is complicated. People define it differently. No single questionnaire captures every corner of a worthwhile life. All true. But none of it leads to the conclusion that happiness cannot be measured or studied.

So I wrote a response and after a lot of editing, it was published! Enjoy:

Here is the link to unlock the article: Todd’s Rebuttal

Read Kessler’s article first, then my rebuttal, and let me know what you think in the comments.

My published rebuttal in The Wall Steet Journal is the final edited version. Below is the slightly unhinged version, that is more than twice as long, that I originally submitted…