Economist Bryan Caplan started a discussion over at the EconLog about the subject of envy. This has inspired responses from others, and I will try and post as many of those links as I can in the notes at the bottom of this post. This is my addition to that discussion.
The reason economists find envy to be such a juicy subject is obvious. It goes hand-in-hand with scarcity. You deal with issues of wealth, poverty, status, distribution, redistribution, fairness, and social justice. As David Henderson points out in one of his articles, the genesis of many a Marxist boiled down not to being informed by the writings of Marx but sheer base envy. Because someone had something they coveted, these people found it unfair and embraced a communist worldview. If you understand envy, you will understand Marxism because Marxism is nothing more than a proposed antidote to envy.
I come at the subject more from a philosophical viewpoint. I cut to the essence of what envy is in itself. Here is the definition I gleaned for envy:
A feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by and in conjunction with desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
I have read the other definitions of envy, and they say much the same thing as this definition. The problem is that all these definitions are wrong. Once you know the correct definition of envy, you will never feel envy ever again. Here we go.
The first aspect of the definition is "desire for the possessions or qualities of another." Now, this desire is not the same as envy. For instance, if I see someone with a smartphone, I have a certain desire for that object. This is because smartphones do neat shit. So, why do I not have one? The answer is reception and battery life. Ultimately, I want a phone not a handheld computer and video game. But let's toss that aside and focus on me wanting a smartphone. In this case, it would be the latest iPhone. I have a friend who demonstrates the phone to me, and I am filled to the brim with techlust. I have to have one. Let's go the next step and assume that I am flat fucking broke and can't afford one. So, what? At what point do I become envious? I don't. I have the desire. Someone else has what I desire. I am not happy about being broke. But I carry no resentment towards the guy with the iPhone. Why is this?
The key here between envy and simple desire is the resentment. But why do people resent when others have something they desire while others don't? Where does this resentment come from?
It is obvious that envy is simple resentment. And this resentment comes from a belief. This belief is an entitlement. So, the true and precise definition of envy is the belief that someone possesses something that rightfully belongs to you. Whether or not this belief is correct or not does not matter. If you believe that someone has something that rightfully belongs to you, you will hate that person. You will resent them. You will not want them to have what you are supposed to have.
The next question is simple. What is it rightfully yours? Once you ask yourself this question, those feelings of envy immediately subside. They vanish. Why? Because at some level, we must face the fact that the world owes us nothing. Everything we have comes to us as a sort of accident. If you doubt this, consider if you were born blind or in North Korea or Kenya. Consider if you were blessed with keen intellect and also Lou Gehrig's Disease. Or consider the lottery winner who exhibited no special virtue except to put a dollar on the counter at a convenience store. Life is very unfair in this regard.
There isn't a day that goes by in my life that I do not admire things I do not have. It could be another person's virtue. It could be their sweet ride. It could be some nice curvy piece of ass. Yet, I do not envy because I feel no entitlement to any of these things. I feel no resentment because these things do not belong to me nor do I believe that I deserve them. The fact that someone else has them means very little to me.
Envy cuts closer to home when we include our peers in the mix. Imagine the neighbor who gets a brand new swimming pool while you have none. You don't care, but your bratty fucking kids start hammering on you to get a motherfucking goddamn pool. But your broke ass can't afford a pool. Suddenly, you are Piece of Shit Dad because you can't deliver the goods. You start to resent Mr. Jones next door because Mr. Jones has YOUR pool. Don't ask me how this happened. So, because you don't have the pool, you start to ride Mr. Jones down. You notice he doesn't tend his lawn like you do, so you throw a shit fit at the HOA meeting. Maybe you make up shit about him like he is having sex with Mrs. Smith across the street while Mrs. Jones is out shopping. The whole point is to undermine the man's morals to show that he does not deserve the pool that rightfully belongs to you. This is because Mr. Jones has the admiration of your kids that rightfully belongs to you. Now, you see the kernel of envy.
The fact is that if Mr. Jones lived just two houses down you wouldn't give a shit. Your kids wouldn't give a shit either. But envy is dictated by proximity and peer group. This is because envy evolved in tribal situations as relative worth was assigned to those who showed certain virtues. We have moved beyond that tribalism but not its impact on our psyches. We want to demonstrate our status and worth to the tribe. But we live in a world today where all the attention is not showered on teachers, firemen, warriors, and scientists but on Snooki from Jersey Shore.
The fact is that envy is a primary component of much unhappiness. The envious person believes the world is unjust. They have been denied the things that belong to them. Those things now belong to others, so they hate those others. It is a life of perpetual resentment. Unfortunately, free market economists don't help matters when they try to defend this social arrangement as just. Something is terribly wrong when the world overlooks cancer researchers to shower money and attention on some trashy bitch on a TV show.
The problem is that some people define justice as fairness. Fairness comes from the idea of equality. Yet, how many people would argue that a doctor should be paid the same as a sheet metal worker? Somehow, this seems unfair because it debases the hard work and intellect of the doctor. These are real virtues. But should Snooki be paid the same as the doctor or the sheet metal worker? Suddenly, the virtue argument breaks down as well. It isn't about equality or virtue anymore. Neither argument makes sense. So, is it about luck? Are we entitled to our fortunes?
I am indebted to the philosopher Alain de Botton for educating me on how these concepts have changed over the centuries relative to society and place. For some, justice is about what is equal and what everyone deserves. For others, it is about virtue and what you have rightfully earned. But the reality is that justice is a myth. There is no justice. There is only fortune.
Fortune explains the Snooki Paradox. Snooki possesses neither virtue nor is she entitled to her very large share of wealth and fame. She is lucky. Ten years from now, her life may take a turn for the tragic like Amy Winehouse. Or she may replace Oprah as the queen of daytime talk. The bottom line is that Snooki is where she is because she was lucky enough to be on a TV show, and people found her entertaining. Those same people might find me entertaining, but I am not on a damn TV show. I'm just a blogger.
The fundamental issue is this. Are people entitled to their luck? I would say they are. This is because if you confiscated all of the loot of the lottery winner, people would cease to play the lottery. Everyone benefits from the lottery. Life is a lottery. It is the ancient Wheel of Fortune.
This concept of fortune eliminates envy because you realize that what comes to you is not a matter of your virtue or what is fair. It comes to you as a matter of luck. It humbles you because you can't really brag. You stopped measuring your worth by material acquistions or fame. You see the people with the status objects as being really silly. And you develop a certain benign wish of good fortune on everyone. I've said some mean things about Snooki, but I love watching her on TV. I hope she enjoys all of it, and I hope she ends up in a good place. She is lucky.
I think people are entitled to their good fortune. This is because they took the risks, and they paid off. We see the winners, but we don't see the losers. Trust me, there are plenty of Italian chicks in Jersey that aren't where Snooki is. But she got the opportunity while they didn't. Now, let's get to the economics of this.
The Marxist worldview is that these opportunities should be eliminated. Everything should be equal. From each according to his ability and to each according to his need. The result of that worldview put into practice is that abilities vanish while needs multiply. This is why socialism in all its forms leads to breakdown.
The capitalist worldview is to each according to his abilities and virtues. The virtue of this approach is that it leads to a great deal of prosperity as people work hard to show themselves deserving. The downside is that it leads to hubris, self-delusion, and class enmity. People recoil from Ayn Rand not so much because she defended an unequal distribution of wealth so much as she defended those with greater wealth as morally superior. This might make sense when discussing a John Galt character but not so much when discussing Jeff Skilling, Donald Trump, or Snooki. The reality is that the signifier of virtue is not always wealth. In fact, virtue goes unrecognized on a daily basis.
The Puritan worldview was quite different from these worldviews because those people believed in predestination. Predestination is quite different from fortune in that they had great faith in God's providence while fortune is just fucking chaos. But the practical outworking of those two concepts was identical. They worked hard but gave little consideration to the wealth or what it meant. This is why they practiced thrift. Wealth was a byproduct of the activity, but it ultimately came from a holy God and given to undeserving sinners such as themselves. This Puritanism serves as an antidote to the excesses of capitalist dogma.
I am an atheist, but I see the value in realizing the role that chance and fortune play in our lives. Good and bad come to us all. So, I don't envy people's fame and fortune. I do envy their virtues, but you can't really call this envy. This is because no scarcity exists with virtue though it may be rare. The consequence of this is that we seek to emulate those people in our own lives and actions. This is the best kind of envy though it would be better to call it "admiration." When you have virtue, it is deserved. When others have virtue, it is deserved.
This leads to a final question. Would you rather have no virtue and good fortune? Or would you rather have supreme virtue and bad fortune? In short, would you rather be Snooki or Stephen Hawking? I can't answer that question for you. What can I say is that none of us deserves what we get for good or ill. That realization should fill you with a certain humility and gratitude.
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NOTES
1. How I Fought Envy
2. How I Fought Envy, Part 2
3. How I Fought Envy, Part 3
4. Envy Has Its Benefits
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