And if you compare to anything but a handful of recent decades, you not only can afford to buy pretty much anything that only the very richest have had access to, you can easily buy things that even the richest have hardly even dreamed of. And yes, still most people find their lives pretty underwhelming.

Which is why I am always a little dubious about economic metrics used to compare across decades. Sure you can measure the cost of the average basket of fruit from my local grocery store, but how do you quantify the fact that there is a greater variety of fresh fruits available in that store today than the richest person in the world would have access to a century ago.

The weird part is how obvious this seems. Obviously, the things we have don't make us significantly happier. But if we lived our lives with this simple assumption, our lives would look infinitely different.

Expensive things I own or rent that make me happy:

* Having my own house (no random roommates or bad family members)

* Having a computer and cellphone

* Having a bike

* Having house plants

These things cost money, and also make me happy. I think the key though is to buy and own things that will bring you joy. If maintaining house plants is a chore you’re doing to keep up with trendy design, it won’t bring happiness. If having a house full of greenery helps to you to feel more connected with nature it will bring joy. Figure out the things you own that bring happiness, and don’t buy the rest.

That sounds just like me. I wonder if you buy apps. There is so much value for me in cell phones (hm, or rather small computers), that i feel, even if it seems like i do not spend too much, that i get a huge bargain with these small devices: weather, nav, music, video, news, chat, photo, etcetc...

>if you compare to anything but a handful of recent decades, you not only can afford to buy pretty much anything that only the very richest have had access to

What are you thinking of here?

No idea what OP was thinking of, but it's easy to think of examples.

Any kind of air travel or trans-oceanic travel is a great example.

In door plumbing is another good one.

Instant communication is another.

Everything sort of has become instant. Instant entertainment (netflix, hulu), instant travel (Uber,Lyft,flights), instant communication (slack, whatsapp, FaceTime).

We live in an age of instant gratification. It only keeps on getting better.

Likewise. The primary limit on media consumption is, of course, time available to consume it, and piracy doesn't change that.

I think the one interesting place is w.r.t textbooks. Piracy means that I can efficiently pull up multiple textbooks on any given subject, as well as textbooks on any pre-requisite subjects. The size and cost of most textbooks would make that untenable otherwise.

Perhaps you are underutilizing your capabilities. I have found this access to books and papers incredibly enriching.

Though my ratio of books skimmed or read partially to books read from beginning to end has skyrocketed, I've found that with many books just one page or even one sentence carries valuable knowledge.

I can't even begin to compare the knowledge I have access to today to what I had just a decade ago, and a decade ago compared to two decades ago is even wider of a difference.

I'd hazard a guess that the primary benefit of being wealthy is not making your peaks even higher but rather lifting up your valleys. You can afford to pay people to do most of the more dreary household stuff like groceries, cleaning, clothes, etc; you don't need to insure small stuff anymore; you can afford to go the extra mile on healthcare (more physiotherapy, chiropracty, w/e); for expensive stuff, if needed you can pay full sticker price instead of having to wait out deals. There's probably tonnes more, those are just the things I could think of off the cuff.

I quite like the dreary stuff, it provides a useful foil to the demanding parts of my work.

It's hard to make people happier over the long term.

Even happiness due to marriage returns to it's base level, in time.

So media ?

But ask yourself:

Are you more knowledgeable because of free non-fiction books ?

Have you been exposed to more culture, and dare i say, better culture because of free TV ?

And aren't those things valuable, even if they don't make you happy ?

“Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.”

- Rabbi Hyman Schachtel (1954)

i suspect it has more to do with experiences. It’s not necessarily about accumulating stuff, digitally or otherwise but about experiencing the the best of these various things. So nicer homes, better food, fancier transport. They’re probably less concerned about knowledge than you and I and are probably more interested in imposing their own views on the world than the rest of us.