The Joyless Economy (1976) Tibor Scitovsky

The Need For Novelty (But, Not Too Much)

This book made me think, regardless of what you think of the author’s (somewhat elitist…?) conclusions that Americans are just boors who can’t appreciate a good Mercedes or Louis Vuitton purse. My notes from reading it are below.

  • “Anything new, in the sense of anything unexpected, is a threat to our survival, because we do not know how to deal with it. Each of us, through the accumulation of personal experience, develops a view of the world, starting from day one. And that view is the basis of the strategy we use for living — for surviving.”
  • “The two kinds of danger — chance of failure and consequences of failure — are totally different and independent; no wonder if their implications for man’s behavior are also different.” Thus, the potential consequences of riding a bike poorly on the street are being flattened by a truck; riding a bike poorly up to the Hollywood sign may result in not making it all the way to the sign. “For my enjoyment of a stimulus, the likelihood of failure, the precise degree of danger of my failing at whatever the problem or task I am tackling, is more important than the amount of danger I would be exposed to in case of failure”
  • “The simplest remedy for too low arousal is bodily exercise.” “There is some evidence that many laboratory animals manage to do about as much running or moving around as they would in the wild.”
  • “The pleasures of stimulation, unlike those of want satisfaction, are not eliminated by their too persistent and too continuous pursuit.” “The satisfaction of wants eliminates a discomfort whose initial presence is a necessary condition of pleasure. We eat to appease hunger, but we must be hungry to enjoy eating… By contrast, stimulation eliminates the discomfort of boredom, but the condition of deriving pleasure from stimulation is the discomfort not of the boredom it relieves, but of the temporary strain it creates. To be enjoyable, a play or a film must build up tensions which are resolved before the end, but the audiences does not have to be bored on its arrival at the theater.”
  • “Drives to relieve discomfort, stimulation to relieve boredom, and the pleasures that can accompany and reinforce both –those are the three motive forces of behavior distinguished by psychologists today”
  • “The dividing line, therefore, between necessities and luxuries turns out to be not objective and immutable, but socially determined and ever changing, very differently drawn in different societies, by different people, and at different times by the same people…” (I.e. indoor plumbing.)
  • “Of all nations, we have the reputation of being the most anxious about health, hygiene, and proper nutrition, yet we have little to show for it. Europeans take a much more casual attitude to these things, yet most of them live longer than we do and their mortality and infant mortality rates are lower than ours… The discomforts, therefore, that we feel when we are deprived of our accustomed routine cannot, as a rule, be explained in terms of legitimate concern over increased dangers to health, but is… explained by our difficulty of relinquishing habits we have become used to.”
  • “As the stimulus is repeated, the primary reaction” (I.e. feeling drunk) “remains unchanged, but the opponent process recruits more promptly, becomes stronger, and lasts longer” (I.e. hangover). This explains addiction. The secondary processes try to get us back to equilibrium
  • “We use money not only as a medium of exchange, but also as the measuring rod of a man’s worth, and we value income not only for the goods it will buy, but also as the proof of our usefulness to society. Being useful to society is a source of satisfaction and comfort; money income is a token of such usefulness and therefore becomes itself a source of satisfaction and comfort… “
  • “In short, the primacy of production over consumption, of monetary over non-monetary values, are both manifestations of the moral judgment which sets service benefiting others ahead of concern for oneself.” (an interesting Catch-22). Thus we do not care about externalities, and we scoff at civilizations with different value structures.
  • “[W]e Americans are more inclined to go in for austere ostentation, displaying our ability to spend a lot of money on goods distinguished from their cheaper counterparts mainly by their conspicuous expensiveness. In that way we maintain our puritanical disdain for the frivolous matter of consumption…”
  • “The same Puritan mentality is manifest in the way in which members of our counterculture seek status. They want to establish their rejection of the dominant culture and their membership in the counterculture at the same time, and they accomplish this feat by means of uniform grooming and dress which asserts their solidarity and appalls the Establishment.” (without regard for style)
  • “The interest of our counterculture in handicrafts may look like a turning back of the clock, but it is a perfect resolution of the dilemma [of insufficient stimulation and low requirements for consumption skills] and the only one fully in the American tradition of simplicity and functionalism”
  • “The rise in the relative price of novelty puts the squeeze on its supply and confronts its suppliers — artists, entertainers, and other such — with the uncomfortable choice between a reduction in their incomes and a decimation of their numbers.” Thus, artists must, in some way, pander to the masses to eat.
  • “In short, even though our Puritan attitude, lack of consumption skills, and disdain for the generalist deprive us of much enjoyable stimulation as consumers, we can make up for the loss by seeking the creative satisfaction of productive work… We have an unfortunate tendency to underestimate the importance of goods and services, activities and satisfactions, that do not go through the market and therefore fail to acquire a monetary value”
  • “The irony is that what I have called our Puritan ghost is largely responsible for the high cost of our life-style, and we find it hard to accept the idea that one way of making our lifestyles less costly is to make it less austere.”

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"For the time being I gave up writing -- there is already too much truth in the world -- an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed!" Otto Rank, 1933

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Underconsumed Knowledge

"For the time being I gave up writing -- there is already too much truth in the world -- an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed!" Otto Rank, 1933