论文提纲怎么写 应该社会政策的目标是创造最大的幸福
“To increase the welfare of the population is generally regarded as an important political goal for modern governments besides e.g. democracy and distributive justice”. (Brulde 2010, p.11)
According to Lord Layard (2005) happiness is a more reliable indicator of welfare than economic (PPP, GDP) or social indicators (literacy, employment, corruption) thus happiness maximization should be the most important goal for the welfare politics. To pursue this goal government will need to introduce an index for happiness measurement and act upon its maximization through implementing various social policies. This essay will reach a conclusion that government should abandon an idea of happiness maximization and that it should be left for individuals discretion.
An idea that good government should promote maximization of happiness of its population is one of the founding concepts of modern political and economic theory and can be traced back to ancient Greece.
Aristotle said that happiness is the only thing that a man wants for its own sake. Anything else we want in this life is the means to live a happy life. Happiness was for Aristotle a self-evident goal. He described happiness (eudemonia) as an activity of the soul, and linked an achievement of happiness to ethical goodness (virtue) to the proper constitution of government.
‘Happiness also linked with liberty as modern western notions of universal human rights and liberties present a demand for universal pursuit of happiness’. (Duncan 2007, p 2.)
Desire for freedom from oppression, war and tyranny, liberty to pursue happiness, for Paine and Jefferson were central legitimate causes for American Revolution. The US Declaration of Independence of 1776 defined ‘the pursuit of happiness’ as one of the main undeniable rights of all citizens. Famous intellectual of the time Thomas Paine wrote: “Whatever the form of Constitution of Government may be, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness.”
(Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man [1790] (1996, p.164))
The rise and expansion of British Empire in 19th century flourished the ideas of such intellectuals as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Jeremy Bentham was a British Philosopher and founder of utilitarianism. At the heart of the utilitarianism lays an idea that an action can be morally justified if only it produced the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The Bentham’s argument contradicted the ideas of classical liberalists as in applying the utility principle the happiness of an individual would be sacrificed for the happiness of the many. Bentham believed that the government has the right to intervene if an individual, because of sickness, age, malnutrition, disability, poverty and bad-luck failed in society. Bentham believed that those social evils were the barriers to happiness, though should be removed.
While another important contributor to utilitarian philosophy was John Stuart Mill. He wrote two important books ‘On Liberty’ in 1859 and ‘Utilitarianism’ in 1861 and contributed to the theory of utilitarianism to make it more acceptable. He introduced the quality of the pleasure and divided it into lower pleasure (the pleasures of body) and the higher pleasure (the pleasures of mind). He suggested that the pleasures of the mind were higher than those of the body and famously wrote “Better to be humans dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”.
It can be argued that these important ideas have influenced the political establishment of the period and became starting point for introduction of Poor Law Amendment in 1847 which arguably transformed the relationship between the state and its citizens and laid the ground for the introduction of the welfare state.
In the twentieth century, “the political use of happiness as a rationale of good government assisted in the establishment of social rights, reflecting a belief that all humans have a positive right to the opportunity of happiness”. (Duncan, 2007, p.6) The 1942 Beveridge Report in the UK, referred to ‘the happiness of a common man’ as the necessary objective (Beveridge 1942, p. 171).
Recently research on happiness has attracted a lot of attention of general public and modern intellectuals. Over the last 3 decades a lot of surveys on levels of happiness were conducted in most of the Western countries. According to the data collected average GNP index per head has risen while the data on happiness over the same period of time shows no correlation with these changes.
‘No clear linear relationship is found between income and subjective well-being – at least not beyond poverty-level incomes’. (Duncan, 2007:6)
These findings refer to – “Easterlin paradox” (Easterlin 1974; 1995; 2001) that is an idea that economic growth in wealthy countries is no longer contributing to happiness is created by Richard Easterlin. It has been found that as people acquire more affluence and income their expectations rise accordingly. Moreover as people tend to estimate their income or subjective well being in relative terms positive effect is diminished as the average income tends to rise at the same rate. (Duncan, 2007)
Hence such authors as Lord Richard Layard suggest that competitive conspicuous consumption does not increase people’s happiness. Layard advices that governments should take more responsibility to enhance people’s ‘well-being’ and implement social policies which will target the happiness as the main goal. Layard calls Western countries to look at the example of Kingdom of Bhutan where government chose Gross National Happiness instead of GDP as the main goal. (Layard, 2005)
论文提纲怎么写 应该社会政策的目标是创造最大的幸福
Although it is necessary to notice that recently the government of Bhutan has decided that preservation of cultural identity and homogeneity is essential for its citizens’ happiness. National dressed is compulsory and until recently television was banned. Furthermore according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to protect indigenous culture and identity Bhutanese government expelled 100,000 Nepali-speaking minority of the population (Duncan, 2007).
Do all these findings mean that happiness should be used as a tool of assessment of social policies and happiness itself should be the goal of government and social policies?
The term ‘subjective well-being’ is often used by the happiness researchers, which is defined as the evaluation of individuals concerning their lives in terms of satisfaction and affective reactions (Diener, 2000; Argyle, 2001). However few authors suggest that the use of term ‘subjective-well being’ as a working definition of happiness has not solved the age old discussion about its meaning. ‘The definition of happiness concerned the greatest minds in history and yet question remains open. If philosophers have never reached a consensus about what happiness really is, it is highly doubtful that the empirical researchers can solve this problem now’. (Prycker, 2010:7)
Furthermore it can be argued that the happiness research is insufficient as we still don’t know what kinds of policies are appropriate and lead to more or less happiness. (Donovan and Halpern, 2002)
Frey and Stutzer in their research paper (Frey and Stutzer, 2007) argues that there are several objections that question the maximization of aggregate happiness as an objective of social policy.
The first obvious limitation is that people tend to change their aspirations due to changes in their life circumstances. Additionally any changes in life circumstances have only a short-term effect on reported subjective well-being as people adapt to the new situation. (Frederick and Loewenstein, 1999)
An example is the lottery winners who, after a short period of elation, report themselves to be not much happier than before (Brickman et al. 1978). Another example is ‘the period of time leading up to marriage significantly rises average happiness but, over the course of marriage, the happiness levels returns to only a little above the pre-marriage level’. (Stutzer and Frey, 2007:8)
In monetary terms people quite rapidly adjust to increases in income as well: after about one year, two-thirds or more of the benefits of an increase in income wear off as people increase their income aspirations (Stutzer 2004; van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004).This process has become known as the aspiration treadmill and has been used to explain the Easterlin Paradox mentioned above. (Stutzer and Frey, 2007)
Further, Duncan suggests that there might be similar ‘rising expectations’ effect around public services and policies. ‘More’ or ‘better’ social policies might also lead to static or reduced happiness among the population. He concludes that we must not forget that after the Post War period, economic growth of the most advanced industrial countries increased affluence of its citizens and improved public services – with massive benefits for education and health. This resulted in well-being improvements in longevity, infant mortality, educational participation and achievement, public hygiene and safety regulations, etc. And yet, despite of all those improvements happiness surveys remained static over that period of time in many countries. (Veenhoven, 2007)
A logical conclusion can be made that while ‘Easterlin paradox’ shows no positive correlation between increased affluence alongside with expanding social services with growth in reported ‘subjective well-being’. Therefore it can be argued that in affluent countries better social policies does not result in greater happiness as each improvement in the public services or in the social environment is met with rising public expectations, leaving people’s sense of satisfaction or well-being at the same level. (Duncan, 2008)
If various social policies which already have been implemented over the last few decades in affluent nations did not have significant effect on growth of happiness it is hard to persuade policy makers that implementation of new social policies will change this situation.
Second strong negative effect of the promotion of happiness by the government is the danger of manipulations and misuse by the different interest groups.
Individuals can adjust to ‘play the system’ – “when individuals become aware that the happiness level they report influences the behavior of political actors, they have an incentive to misrepresent it” (Frey and Stutzer 2007: 12) – or political parties can interpret in such way that will support their political agenda.
“Conservative parties would happily refer to the positive impact of a stable family life, marriage or religion. Liberals would have more interest in research demonstrating that individual freedom is an important factor of people’s happiness. And leftist parties would on their turn be interested in ‘Easterlin paradox’ that demonstrates that material growth has a limiting value on the population’s happiness. Finally, extreme right parties could be less keen on happiness research since research has demonstrated that tolerance is an important positive factor for the citizens’ happiness”. (Pryckner 2010, p. 11) Such difference in interpretation and controversies make applications of happiness research inconsistent.
To illustrate the complexity of the relationship between theory and application of designed social policies, Veenhoven suggests considering the case of obesity as a social problem.
‘Obesity being a well-known major problem in western countries with high costs to welfare system should be tackled with simple social policies which will encourage a change of diet and lifestyle. However policy-makers are opposed by numerous ideological disagreements, vested interests, and resistance to perceived government interference’. (Veenhoven, 2008; p.6)
Happiness maximization principle if accepted as the most important political goal may conflict with other important values as equality, freedom, justice, sustainability and the reduction of poverty. Especially the conflicts between individual’s freedom with the happiness maximization concept and the scope of government’s intervention are central to this essay’s debate.
Inglehart et al. (2009) suggest that the real arise of happiness that was indicated in many countries is seriously influenced whether these societies had democratic governments, liberal economic systems and allowed free choices. Hence logically to suggest that if government interventions will become to paternalistic it will have negative consequences on general happiness of the population. “In that case it can be argued that people should have the freedom to make mistakes or choose for unhappiness”. (Pryckner, 2010; p.14)
Communities do not feel happiness, only individuals feel it therefore generalization from a single person to a large number of people raises some ethical issues. Duncan suggests that happiness experienced by an individual can form a guide to his own ethical reasoning and can be an individual’s ultimate personal goal; however this does not make happiness as the ultimate political goal. Furthermore he concludes that ‘even if happiness surveys are relevant information for public policy they would not overcome the basic ethical-political problems of the policy-making process. No matter how much information is produced to show under what social conditions people report greater happiness, these conclusions, on their own, can have no morally compelling basis for the actions of governments.’ (Duncan 2008, p. 12)
While these questions are controversial and difficult to answer the conclusion derived from happiness research that individuals should be told what is good for them by experts opposes basic principles of democracy. Even though it might be true that individuals are not able to decide wisely on what is good for them – an idea that policymakers can do so instead can be treated very skeptically.
论文提纲怎么写 应该社会政策的目标是创造最大的幸福