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Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential crisis

(www.cbsnews.com)
271 points nradov | 4 comments | 18 Nov 24 13:53 UTC | HN request time: 1.058s | source
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jdietrich ◴[18 Nov 24 15:21 UTC] No.42173139[source]▶
Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.

I'm also not sure that mass emigration should be seen as an existential threat. Many developing economies have very successfully leveraged emigration and remittances as an engine of economic growth. If Bhutan can modernise into a more open economy, those young people could start returning home with the skills, experience and capital to do great things.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

https://www.nsb.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/1...

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2024/03/11/a-stron...

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psychoslave ◴[18 Nov 24 15:29 UTC] No.42173242[source]▶
>Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.

Is it really that hard to imagine? For someone not flooded by continuous stream of advertisements about how far better would be their live if they could buy the next crap the wonderful market planned with obsolescence included, it’s not that hard to imagine the lake of "upward mobility" as a barrier to live happily.

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bluGill ◴[18 Nov 24 15:41 UTC] No.42173397[source]▶
Advertisement comes in many forms. Seeing the rich nobles and their kids walk around with something you don't have is a form of advertisement. Poor people are not stupid, they notice when the rich have something interesting and they tend to want that too.
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psychoslave ◴[18 Nov 24 16:10 UTC] No.42173749[source]▶
Advertisement aims to convince people that they need to buy something.

The nobles that walk around with their kids might be animated with pervert narcissism and enjoying poor people looking at them with envy, but they are certainly not their to suggest plebeians should strive at obtaining the same kind of wealth they want everyone to think they enjoy.

Also nobles more often than not have their own existential threats and fears. It’s not like going up the social ladder is a certain path to more serenity and happiness.

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1. bluGill ◴[18 Nov 24 17:53 UTC] No.42174935[source]▶
> Advertisement aims to convince people that they need to buy something.

That is wrong because of the word buy. Political ads are not convincing you to buy anything. The nobles don't want the result, but the plebeians still see their wealth and want it.

> Also nobles more often than not have their own existential threats and fears. It’s not like going up the social ladder is a certain path to more serenity and happiness.

I 100% agree with this. However from the point of view of the poor it looks much better (I tend to agree with them even though I'm closer to the rich end - like most people reading HN)

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2. psychoslave ◴[19 Nov 24 09:25 UTC] No.42181484[source]▶
> Political ads are not convincing you to buy anything.

My own (non-native) sense of the meaning attache to advertisement is matching the first one given in Wiktionary:

> A commercial solicitation designed to sell some commodity, service or similar.

And from there, I can perfectly see how it might lead to a metaphorical use, but just aptly as in "politicians want plebeians to buy their bullshits".

> I'm closer to the rich end - like most people reading HN

Do you have statistics about that? By the very essence of capitalism, most people are despoiled at the bottom of the pyramid. I get that those winning the Silicon Valley lottery can end up with millions in their bank account, but how do we evaluate the percentage of readers of HN that are in the higher end of the incomes percentiles ?

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3. bluGill ◴[19 Nov 24 17:39 UTC] No.42186107[source]▶
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri... If you make 150k or more you are in the top 25%. You may not be rich but you are doing well. And that is just us income, throw the world at it and everyone looks good.
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4. psychoslave ◴[19 Nov 24 20:44 UTC] No.42187892{3}[source]▶
I made 50k/year over the last two years, and that's the best I ever earned and I'm 40 old, living in France.

I don't mean that I feel like the poorest person in the world, to be clear, especially if we can agree that money income is a poor proxy to measure how lucky we are in life.