AI Practice Knowledge BaseCounterintuitive Facts (15): Why Is Everyone Richer But More Anxious?
PremiumPositional Goods: Some things can never be enough because their value lies in 'others not having it'
I. Suppose your boss excitedly tells you: "Congratulations, I'm giving you a 50% raise!" You're so happy you almost jump. On the way out, you hear a colleague saying: "The boss just gave me a 100% raise." In that instant, your happiness vanishes. Replaced by anger, humiliation, and anxiety. Your absolute wealth increased by 50%. But your relative status dropped. You feel insulted.
II. This isn't psychological distortion. This is the human operating system. Psychological experiments prove: Given two choices: A: You earn $100K/year, colleagues earn $50K B: You earn $150K/year, colleagues earn $300K Most people choose A. They'd rather earn $50K less than let others earn more than them.
III. Economist Fred Hirsch revealed a cruel truth in 1976: Above the poverty line, human happiness depends a
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