Can Happiness Be Bought?
filed in Odds and Ends on May.23, 2009
Its Memorial weekend and I am away for the next couple of days tending to business. In the meantime, I thought I would share an interesting video on the price of happiness.
Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world’s most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you.
Benjamin Wallace is a journalist and author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar, the true story of the world’s most expensive bottle of (possibly phony?) wine.
Enjoy!
Aman, MBA
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May 23rd, 2009 on 4:18 am
Using money always has a trade off. If I spend a lot I also have to appreciate it a lot. Value selling is the corner stone of this approach and to my observation value is experience the higher the more people see the actual consumption.
Jake Stone´s last blog post..On the bottom of the piracy food chain
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May 24th, 2009 on 4:03 am
I just can’t sit through another lengthy, navel-gazing TED video where it’s all presentation and no substance. So you’ll have to take my word without me wishing I got those wasted 15 minutes of my life back.
Oscar Wilde once said the cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. By chosing the items you’ve listed here, you’ve got yourself a modern day version — someone who thinks that price is a direct proxy for quality, when in reality it has a lot more to do with supply and demand. Having money is no substitute for having good taste.
Which is unfortunate. Because if someone were to make any legitimate attempt at a statement about happiness, I would presume it would be more about quality of life than “supply and demand of life”. And that, in its essence, is a primal failure in the premise of any such discussion.
As such, I fortunately don’t wish for those 15 minutes of my life back.
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June 29th, 2009 on 12:51 am
No… and I am not just saying this for moral reasons. Its true, I mean sure those who are struggling to make ends meet are going to be unhappy. Yet as soon as you hit the level where you are not struggling (the middle class) you are just as happy as the wealthy. You are going to keep wanting more and more regardless… you are just as happy even though you think you would be happier if you had more money, more stuff.
-Randy
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Aman@BullsBattleBears Reply:
July 1st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
very valid points you made there Randy!
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May 24th, 2010 on 1:24 am
Happiness is a state of mind that really depends how we see the situations in our lives each day. you can have all the riches in the world but still see it as a lonely place.`,*
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