Lots of valid criticisms of the oft touted "happiness index."
Off the top of my head from something I read a while back: Finland is listed as one of the happiest countries, but also has a higher rate than normal of prescribed anti psychotics and anti depressants, and also has high rates of alcoholism and suicide. Something isn't lining up there.
My own anecdotal experience as well conflicts. When I travel through Scandinavia, people seem... Fine. Friends I have there say you're basically not allowed to talk to strangers, at all, everyone is meant to just quietly ignore each other. Meanwhile the deeper I go into Vietnam, even deep into where people still live on stilt houses made by hand tools, the happier and more sociable people are. My friends say the same of various countries in Africa.
Not being as happy and being unhappy are not the same.
Regardless, you should read Robert Putnam's essay, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century (2007). He makes it clear that social trust goes down because of it.
Because the culture that's moving in is intolerant of my way of life and wants to piecemeal eradicate it by using the government to incrementally make every bit of the way I live harder, more expensive or subject to capricious enforcement if not outright illegal.
I thought I would be able to get in a good 20-40yr settling down where I did and would only be complaining about this stuff when I was old. It's been about 10 and it's all going to shit.
And yes, I am intentionally not being specific and leaving room for assumption.
> And yes, I am intentionally not being specific and leaving room for assumption.
One thing I've consistently noticed about these kinds of conversations is that people want to be allowed to share racist opinions without suffering the social consequences of sharing racist opinions, but in order to do so they have to hide their true values by masking their language and not actually say anything that has any meaning.
I have nothing in my value system I'm ashamed of, I'll say any aspect of it in any company at all. Is it hard not having a value system like that?
Lol, and that's exactly why I worded it the way I did.
As far are I'm concerned the "wrong kind of people" are the ones with no real problems and a propensity to make ones by gettin involved in other people's business. The fact that those people are mostly white is just random luck of how history turned out.
They show up, they get to screeching in the town hall meetings and before you know it the flock cameras go up, code enforcement is prowling around with a drone, Starbucks replaces the Popeyes, half the businesses you patronize sell out to developers of bougie stuff you don't want, everything costs more, etc, etc.
I'm sure the city wins on paper, it's replacing it's existing people with richer ones. And I'm sure the people who sell stuff to these richer people win, but everyone who was here first loses. We just wanted to pay low rents, drink beer on our front porches and let our kids ride dirtbikes in the street and generally live our lives.
I chose this city specifically because the kind of people I didn't want anything to do with said it sucked so much "my dad dealt crack in the 90s and that's where he'd meet his supplier" and all that, and it was so far away from where they usually like to settle. But with what happened to land values, rents, etc. after 2020 pushed a lot of them out here.
This is so bizarre, your initial comment comes off like the typical "crime is because diversity" people, but it sounds like you have some kind of class conscious issue with affordability?
Personal anecdote, having lived in a few very poor countries and a few relatively very wealthy ones:
1) In the poor countries, I find people are generally quite happy living their day to day lives but rate their happiness low - because they think people in wealthy countries have it so much better. I.e. they underrate their happiness because they think wealthy people must be so much happier.
2) Vice versa in the wealthier countries - so many miserable people, but, they feel that they can't complain because they see how bad things are in the poor countries.
I think these "happiness ratings" are a bunch of bullshit. Some of the happiest families and communities I've seen are in the poor countries while so many people are miserable and lonely in the wealthy countries.
I believe it is very very hard for a person to subjectively rate their own happiness. (Edit to add, especially when they are comparing their own happiness against cultures and people they have mostly only seen on TV).
So basically, you dont believe people when they talk about how they feel and what they think, because you think you know them better.
That is not how it works. If you ever had someone else project feelings they think you have on you while ignoring what you say, you would know how absurdly missing the mark they are.
You do realize that the literal first factor that is used to calculate that index is GDP per capita, right? And that life expectancy (another factor) correlates with the GDP of the country?
The happiest countries in the world are also rich [1].
I'm not saying you can't fuck up being rich. But it's a lot harder to be fulfilled if you're poor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2025_re...