unfortunately humans don't think like this. when asked if they would rather make $50k while everyone else makes $25k or 100K while everyone else makes $200k (the costs of goods and services being the same) people overwhelmingly choose the former. why? status is zero-sum. mate-pairing relies on looking good compared to the next person, not on absolute scales of standard of living.
> when asked if they would rather make $50k while everyone else makes $25k or 100K while everyone else makes $200k (the costs of goods and services being the same) people overwhelmingly choose the former. why?
I'd like to see the cite, because most behavioral economics research that I've seen is crap.
But, even if that's true, so what? It's dumb to act as if pi = 4 even if "everyone" wants it to be.
Yes, I realize that you're not arging that we should act as if envy is better than greed, you're just saying that people think that it is. So, what do we do about that?
