Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential crisis

Despite the headline CBS gave the article, it seems the problem is not with happiness, but with the seductive appeal of materialism and the effects of exposing one culture to another.

Social comparison theory is the idea that our satisfaction with what we have isn't an objective measure, but is actually based on what we see other people have. Young people generally seem to have an innate desire to leave their hometowns and seek out what else might be waiting out there for them. When you add in globalization and media influence exposing them to what looks like a "better" life with more things, it's not surprising that they've seen ~9% of young people leave Bhutan.

The other question is, what will happen if Bhutan does increase their financial wealth as well as their happiness? Will they then see a net influx of people through immigration, looking for the lifestyle Bhutan promises? And will those new people be able to maintain the culture Bhutan has cultivated?

It sounds like the concept of Gross National Happiness is a successful one, on its own, but it brings new challenges that couldn't have been forseen originally. That doesn't mean they can't solve them without giving up their core values.

Nah, the issue is the one that many developing countries suffer from: brain drain.

The best people leave the country because the can earn orders of magnitude more money in the developed world. This is why countries like the US keep being so successful while developing countries stay poor.

It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? There is nothing wrong with striving for a better life, it is what moves humanity forward.

Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations.

The solution is to either keep the population ignorant, hamstringing their education so they are less useful abroad and implementing a strict censorship regime so they don't get "corrupted" by the West or well force them to stay.

We saw that all play out in the Soviet Block. There is a good reason there was a wall.

I think the fairest solution is to NOT make education free but instant offer a deal of having to stay in the country and work for X-years in the profession one has been trained in by the state. Once they get older and settle down they are less likely to leave anyway.

Being a developing country just sucks. There is a reason most never break the cycle of poverty.

I'm part of the brain drain from my developing country-of-birth.

It's more than just money. To me, the money is a symptom of the real issue.

The real issue for me was the culture that exists in my birthplace. It just isn't welcoming to nerds or rich people. It doesn't lend itself to ever becoming developed.

When I compare and contrast to the New World: I find a much more welcoming culture that encourages personal progress. And not only are nerds welcome, but all sorts of productive folk. It's absolutely no surprise to me that the US is outperforming the rest of the world economically to a comical degree.

This is the more correct answer. It's also answers why developed nations became developed and undeveloped nations did not. The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior.

That being said, I wouldn't use the US as some bastion of progress. Technically, we haven't progressed much since the 70s? 80s? outside of GDP going up, but that's just a number on a chart. Most of us today could go back to the 70s and live not much different than now (compared to the any earlier decade). It's mostly a side effect of being the world's reserve currency.

> The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior.

Centuries prior they had a global slave trade going on. The wealth of the West is build on colonialism.

Culture just reflects the underlying material conditions that people live in. There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture. Wealth is cumulative and first mover advantages are strong. And if anyone threatens the current hegemony, there is always the use of force.

But yes, you are right there has been a stagnation since the 80s and things are slowly changing ins favor of countries like China and India.

> There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture.

I'm not necessarily intending to contradict this outright, but after having just spent a summer reading through the history of the collectivist cultures in Russia/China during the last century, all I could think of is how lucky I was not to be born into that.

So, sure, nothing "inherently" superior, but certainly comparatively superior, in my opinion.

People in Russia and China are saying the same thing about the West, having read critical histories of the modern West (e.g. Wang Huning, America Against America).

Based on the data, a lower/middle class person born in PRC almost certainly has better prospects of upward mobility and avoiding poverty.

Interesting. I just read a long expose on Mao's party and the tens of millions of Chinese people they are responsible for killing. Can you recount a similar story of the West? Just trying to understand how it compares.

There's a huge amount of documented history of mass killings, destruction of institutions, and economic exploitation by the West and USA in particular. By American authors, too.

Frankly, I'm astonished that you aren't aware of this.

Name one on par with Stalin’s agricultural reforms or the Cultural Revolution or the madness in Cambodia.

Genocide of Native American peoples, enslavement of Africans, political subjugation of LatAm, largest modern gulag system (#1 prisoners per capita, prison slavery still practiced).

Unquestionably some of these were unacceptable acts. But the numbers don't stack up. There's also a huge qualitative difference.

According to [0] there was a population decline adding up to 4 million native deaths (from all causes, including hunger and disease) over the past half a millennium.

Russia and China killed 5-10 million of their own people just in the past century. They had cannibal banquets where they quite literally ate the rich in public ceremonies. China, right now, has more than a million Muslims in prison camps, churning out gadgets for the communist economic machine.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_th...

If the issue is that you hate the United States, you'll always find something to criticize, and I think we'll never find common ground.

I grew up surrounded by many anti-American ideas. But when I tried to examine that place from a neutral point of view, in the proper context, after traveling to and living in many places, I found it impossible not to become a raving fan.

> They had cannibal banquets where they quite literally ate the rich in public ceremonies.

Out of curiosity, what are the sources for this claim? I'm not disputing at all that communist regimes have committed large-scale evil (often beyond my wildest imagination), but nonetheless I'd like to verify this.