Are You Tall?

Is this the same kind of question as "Are you happy?" Steve Landsburg thinks so, but I have a different opinion. The title question pretty clearly refers to some external standard, and in particular to other people, almost certainly others of your sex and age group - adult or child. The second question clearly refers to a purely internal standard, and almost certainly to an absolute rather than relative sense. I could be pretty unhappy even if I was slightly less unhappy than I was yesterday - or contrarywise.

So how could an ostensibly bright guy like Landsburg - here I am referring to an external standard of IQ tests, professional accomplishment, etc - make such a dumb error of category?

I don't know, but I have a guess - systematic intellectual dishonesty.

All this is apropos of a couple of Landsburg posts, each of which, like Tolstoy's unhappy families (Anna Karenina), is unhappy in its own way.

Tuesday's Burg deals with freedom and prosperity, with freedom being measured by somebody's indices of political freedom, civil liberties, and economic freedom respectively versus prosperity being measured by per capita GDP. These results are presented in three graphs.

Each index shows some correlation between freedom and prosperity, but the economic freedom correlation is clearly the strongest. Landsburg concludes:

Political freedom and civil liberties are good things. I endorse them. But as far as human happiness goes, capitalism is an even better thing.

Now I find equating capitalism with economic freedom a bit dubious, since some forms of capitalism don't really offer a lot of economic freedom, but if we consider capitalism in the Smithian ideal, maybe so. The second equation, between per capita GDP and human happiness is a laugher, though. It's when challenged on this that the Burg steps into Preposteroland, referring us to this older post.

I don’t think self-reported happiness tells us anything at all about actual happiness. If a pollster asks me “Are you happy?”, the question I’m going to answer is “Are you happier than your friends seem to be?”. Regardless of the ambient level of happiness, about half of us will always answer “No”.

Now this is just goofy. If the doctor prods him and asks "does this hurt" is he going to answer the question "do I hurt less than my friends seem to?" If he wakes up puking, does he ask himself the question "do I seem sicker than my friends?"

And next:

A colleague of mine observes that the average American man is about 2 inches taller than a hundred years ago. But you’d never learn that from a survey that asks people “Are you tall?”. That’s because a 5′9″ man would probably have answered “yes” a hundred years ago and “no” today. And likewise, people might be far happier today than a hundred years ago, but you’d never learn that from a survey that asks “Are you happy?”

The thing is, his happiness analysis doesn't even meet his own standard. Most of us, especially if we travel, are exposed to people of a wide variety of levels of prosperity. If we ask ourselves, do these people seem to be as happy as the people I meet of some significantly different level of prosperity, it's pretty clear that wealth doesn't necessarily make one happy, and that poverty, short of desperation, doesn't necessarily make one unhappy.

I am reminded of a Tennessee Williams quote, which I can't find exactly, but has the following sense: Before my first big theatrical success, I was poor, lived in a miserable apartment, didn't know where the rent money was coming from, but I was happy. After the big Broadway success, I was rich, and livid in luxury, but I was miserable.

I suspect that Landsburg dismisses these rather obvious facts because they don't fit this theory. Any other guesses?

And, by the way, I am fairly happy at the moment.

And fairly tall, too.