THE REFLECTION OF THE WORLD IN RAPANUI

On the path of synthetic happiness

As Milanovic points out, one of the most probable possibilities for the future of globalized and consumerist capitalism is that of “a utopia of wealth and a dystopia of personal relationships.” That utopia of wealth would then have to exist in a world with finite resources and individualistic relationships. Thus, accepting the basic premise of physics that “nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed,” the history of Rongorongo Island, part of the Easter Islands, is relevant to the future of humanity.

In 1722, three Dutch ships lost their way in the Pacific Ocean, reaching the aforementioned island. To their surprise, they found 887 Moais, or giant statues, that weighed up to 270 tons each! The existence of these massive works of art is utterly contrary to what the colonizers observe: a poor and small population (3000 inhabitants) incapable of supporting a social class of artisans. The islanders did not know how to move the statues and did not even have tools such as ropes or sleds to help with such an objective. These statues of a rich and developed society conflicted with the existing poverty, forcing researchers to theorize about the PREVIOUS existence of a prosperous society.

Indeed, the archaeological records indicate that the islands were populated by Polynesians around the year 400, showing a great density of fish skeletons in this period and an extensive palm forest home to birds that served as food for the local inhabitants. While it is estimated that the statues were built between 1100 and 1500[1], the forest completely disappeared around 1400, when the population was about 10,000 people.

Precisely, the decline of the islands would have begun around that year, when carbon records indicate the presence of weapons, cannibalism, and precarious homes such as caves or, on the contrary, fortified houses that would serve to protect from insecurity. Additionally, the number of houses on the coast, where many islanders lived, had been reduced by 70% by 1700.

There was no control over the use of resources, and these were consumed at higher rates than they were renewed, increasing poverty and insecurity each period, causing the island’s social collapse, violence, and population reduction.[1] Thus, the cooperation mechanisms between many inhabitants necessary to produce these allegedly religious monuments imploded with the religion itself. Therefore, archaeologists classify the evolution of these islands into 3 stages: Settlement, Expansion, and Decline.

To calculate the amount of population that an island can maintain according to its characteristics, once the FAMOUS steady state has been reached, Brander and Taylor[2](1998) make a dynamic model. Among the various variables that come into play are the amount of INITIAL renewable resources, their renewal rate, the number of inhabitants together with their fertility and mortality rate, technology, the taste for food that translates into the share of the work dedicated to harvest, etc. The interaction of these factors will either reach a point of population equilibrium or, on the contrary, the implosion of the island.

The big difference between Rongorongo and other islands, which led to a “cultural regression spiral” seems to have been the low renewal rate of the resource, as palm trees were abundant but grew slowly, causing the population to increase grotesquely, and once the resource was exhausted falling in the same way. What for the Polynesians were palm trees, which seemed infinite at first, for us, could be oil and mining since the renewal rate of these resources (if existent) is millions of years.

Another 12 “mystery islands” were completely unoccupied when the Europeans arrived. They seem to have wiped out their entire population due to a too-low initial level of resources, causing the non-existence of a steady state where there are inhabitants, reconverting into virgin islands. What will the state of the world be once we finish off non-renewable resources?

The variable in the model that economists rely on to avoid such a disaster is technology. We expect to produce more each year, trusting that as knowledge advances, we will be able to produce more using less, thus surviving, at some point, from renewable resources only. Although in the long-term technology may allow us to use less, as long as consumption and population continue to grow, at some point, humans will be using a more significant amount of resources than are renewed, unless technological advance knows no limit, and soon we’ll be producing food and objects through the manipulation of atoms or something along those lines.

By not knowing or trusting the limits and the current path of technology, today there is a (not that) new economic current, which, instead of only observing the facts and explaining where the world is headed, does research and activism to change it, the “degrowth” theories. They propose that the search for increased production should not be the final objective of policy since many economic activities that add to the GDP destroy more than they contribute.

For example, before the pandemic, the IMF projected French Guyana[3]GDP growth of 86%[4](even with the pandemic, it grew by 31% in 2020 and 8.1% in 2021). However, this growth did not materialize in the improvement of any social indicator since it is a consequence of the discovery of large oil reserves, which only means a victory for a few pockets and a massive burden for the rest. Gold miners ruling over the natives, now alongside oil companies. All of this to export to northern countries with terms of trade that favor the country that maintains them as a colony, allowing continental French people to maintain their high consumption.

Therefore, the theory goes that the countries of the global north should stop plundering the world and start being more selective with the type of economic growth they choose, leading them to reduce their GDP and achieve a better quality of life. For this, they propose a reduction of working hours, universal basic salary, higher taxes on billionaires, and all kinds of policies that would allow wealth to be redistributed by lowering the carbon footprint.

Although it seems politically unfeasible in the Western world due to the difference in political weight between those who would benefit and those who would lose assets, it would also require collective organization in an increasingly individualistic and fragmented north; in a strictly economic way, it makes sense. As you see, the most fundamental theory is that the higher the net worth, the less additional utility that person will have for generating more money. It is not the same to find money on the street for the poor as for the rich; it’s called “diminishing marginal utility.” The first sip is always the tastiest. This theory fits perfectly with the economic and philosophical discoveries about material happiness.

In 1974, Estearlin[5] showed that the United States, despite the very high levels of growth after the Second War, showed no improvement in the well-being of its inhabitants, creating the Easterlin Paradox and concluding that the GDP was an indicator without many arguments. This discovery would later be observed in other countries and become a stylized fact of material or “hedonic” happiness research.

DiTella and MacCulloch[6](2009) use the Gallup poll, which asks thousands of people about their level of happiness from 1 to 10, to test the paradox in a study that crosses 132 countries between 1960 and 2005, the result is that in rich countries there seems to be no correlation between increased income and happiness, while this correlation is maintained in countries with poorer populations.

The Gallup poll has its issues, starting with cultural differences. For a Japanese, it can be disrespectful to show extreme happiness, while for a Colombian, a smile and a little positivism can seem the least before a guest or a pollster. Consequently,  it was studied at more local levels[7], thus understanding that ONCE BASIC POVERTY IS OVERCOME, happiness levels do not increase with income.

The fact is that when there is an increase in the income of a poor or wealthy person, there is an immediate increase in their happiness. The difference is that, within a few weeks, that happiness will completely vanish for the rich person, while in the long run, it will still impact the lives of the poor[8]. It seems that what we economists call utility could be the ephemeral happiness of material acquisition. Indeed, the study of happiness agrees with economic theory; marginal utility is decreasing in quantities and in time[9]. More than a path to happiness, money is life insurance.

Brickman and two other colleagues[10](1978) go so far as to demonstrate that individuals who won lotteries between 50,000 and one million dollars do not have higher levels of life satisfaction than their counterparts. Meanwhile, other events, such as marriage[11], friendship, having a child, or a disability, affect happiness permanently[12]. We are forced to reverse the saying, money does buy happiness (up to a point), but crying like an Afghan hound in a Ferrari is the same as crying like a pig in a mud puddle.

Material happiness seems to be as ephemeral as sexual pleasure. An expensive and polluting car can serve you for years, but the joy of obtaining it takes only a few weeks. The starting assumption of economics that more is always better only holds in the short term. These economic discoveries are closely aligned with the philosophies of yesteryear, such as Cynicism, which preaches that money enslaves you because you anticipate fulfilling desires, but you never stop having them.

Interestingly, Buddhist thinking is also in sync with economic theory when assuming that the lack of happiness comes from CONSTANT DESIRE. Today, we differentiate between absolute poverty and poverty in central countries. It is a course taught at any university, “relative poverty,” which teaches a poverty index with several criteria to meet, such as owning a washing machine, that indicates poorness relative to the region in which you live. This poverty is considered important because humans are used to comparing themselves with their peers, so poverty went from being an economic state to a social feeling. In a certain way, a part of the poverty in DEVELOPED COUNTRIES would not be the product of the decrease in wealth but of the multiplication of desires.

As Harari explains in his book on the history of humanity, there is no proof that today we are happier than any collecting or early agricultural homo sapiens. Happiness seems to be intrinsic to man, just like mental illness, intelligence, and the ability to play sports, which seems to have a component of genetic predisposition and another of the environment and culture in which one grew up. In line with this, economic theory shows that material happiness becomes more ephemeral the more you have.

In his conversation with Gallup, Socrates finds the origin of wars: luxuries. Indeed, a society can live with what it has. However, once it becomes interested in luxuries, it enters an endless circle of ARTIFICIAL SHORTAGE. That artificial scarcity leads to attacking the neighbor, which in turn makes the city need to grow larger to house an army. And so, this false misery would be one of the leading causes of wars and, in the case of today’s world, of the looting of the south by the global north.

Nowadays, science and knowledge are not insurance for humanity as it only takes a few rotten apples to damage the entire plantation. Someone had to cut down the last palm tree on the Easter Islands: competition for resources caused the population of the island to fall and will possibly reduce the world population due to the “TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS” in which there is competition for the appropriation of the land and resources rather than for its care and maintenance.

This is one of the reasons why individualist capitalism enriched Chileans with materials of ephemeral happiness to the point of being the second GDP per capita in the region, making them an “example of the continent” while it also left them without water. Indeed, being the only country in the world that treats water rights as private capital allowed them to shoot up their GDP since it registers the added value of the company that bottles it, unlike a universal provision by the state or children who drink from the river. At the same time, they are also the country with the highest water stress on the continent and the 24th in the world, with more than half of the population living in areas with “severe water scarcity,” despite having 1,200 rivers and 3,500 glaciers, making it the third largest freshwater reserve in the world.

Thus, a world whose cultural strength is shown in movies, holograms, and mass entertainment could have the same future as an island whose state-of-the-art was seen in tattoos, feathers, and stone monuments. In Rongorongo, peace reigned for a thousand years before exploding into crisis and violence. It was a remarkable and unique culture that showed tremendous continuity combined with innovation and development, which temporarily, but brilliantly, surpassed its limits to crash DEVASTATINGLY, with the detail that in the absence of trees, the inhabitants could not escape in canoes, in the same way, that the vast majority will not be able to escape to Mars.

Will we have the same path of Settlement, Expansion, and Decline? Suppose the ephemeral happiness of material goodness continues to guide the way we treat the world around us. In that case, expansion probably won’t stop until decay is inevitable (if not already, as many scientists say). In my humble opinion, the human population will still grow until reaching a peak. From there, it would sharply decline without completely disappearing, as happens with many species (showing that with conscience and thumbs, we are still ANIMALS) and as happened in Rapanui.

[1]Jarred Diamond, 2005. “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”

[2]James A. Brander and M. Scott Taylor, 1998, “The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use,” The American Economic Review

[3]That country that is located between Venezuela and Brazil and yet no one feels it as part of the region.

[4]https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-51503162

[5]Easterlin, R. (1974): “Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence”

[6]Tella, Rafael & Macculloch, Robert. (2009). Happiness Adaptation to Income Beyond “Basic Needs”.

[7]Galiani, Sebastian and Gertler, Paul J. and Undurraga, Raimundo, The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing (April 2015). NBER Working Paper No. w21098, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2596427

[8]Clark, A., Frijters, P. and M. Shields (2008) “A Survey of the Income Happiness Gradient”, Journal of Economic

literature

[9]This is one of the reasons why there are interest rates.

[10]Brickman, P., Coates, D. and R. Janoff-Bullman (1978) “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness

Relative?”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

[11]Shawn Grover & John F. Helliwell, 2014. “How’s Life at Home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness,” NBER Working Papers

[12]Anusic, Ivana & Yap, Stevie & Lucas, Richard. (2014). Testing Set-Point Theory in a Swiss National Sample: Reaction and Adaptation to Major Life Events. Social indicators research