The Welfare Foundation of public policies and its implications

Understanding the Welfare Foundation of Public Policies

What should public policies be for?

The position here is that public policies should, ultimately speaking, be for the promotion of social welfare. What is social welfare? This is the welfare of people in the relevant society (discussing the issue of animal welfare later).

What is welfare?

I regard my welfare as my happiness; or more precisely, my net happiness, positive happiness minus unhappiness. I use the terms ‘happiness’, ‘welfare’, and ‘subjective wellbeing’ interchangeably. They differ only in that ‘happiness’ is normally used more casually and refers to one’s feelings at the moment, while the other two terms are usually used more formally and refer to the longer term. Given the same period and ignoring the trivial issue of formality, the three terms are the same, at least in my usage.

What is happiness?

The happiness of a person is her subjective feeling that is positive/good/nice, including what is caused by either material or spiritual factors. As subjective affective (causing good or bad feelings) feelings, the feelings themselves must be mental, whatever the causes. Whether the sweetness of eating ice cream or the proudness of high achievement, they are all felt in one’s mind, not in the body.

What are public policies?

They are all policies undertaken by a government for the society (usually a country or a state) under its governance, including economic policies like taxation, spending, and import tariffs; foreign or diplomatic policies on relations with other countries; legal policies like constitutions, laws adopted/enacted; social policies like the legality and encouragement/discouragement of personal relationships including sex and marriage. These different areas may have some intersections.

Public policies may aim for the maintenance of law and order, international peace and cooperation, raising more government revenues to pay for public spending, including the salaries of government employees, etc. However, ultimately, they should aim to promote social welfare, and the net happiness of people in society. Here, for simplicity, we ignore the effects on people in other countries and on animals. Where such effects are important, they should also be taken into account, with complications regarding the appropriate tradeoffs between them.

For example, on the issue of animal welfare, I make the distinction between ideal morality and practical policy. For the former, it is good to treat animal welfare at parity with human welfare.

However, at least at this stage of our moral development, most individuals/governments/ countries have not reached this high moral ground. Paying some and increasing (over time) attention to animal welfare is usually the limit of individual morality and public policies. For the trade-off between different individuals in the same society/country, the classical utilitarian position of parity between all individuals, and maximizing the unweighted (or equally weighted) sum of all individual (net) welfare is morally compelling and has been shown to follow from compelling axioms (Ng 1975).

For trade-offs between domestic and foreign individuals, we have a similar situation as the case of animal welfare discussed above (though the magnitudes concerned could be quite different). Ideal morality requires parity but most individuals/governments have partiality towards their fellow country persons.

For the simple case of ignoring animals and people in different countries, why should the ultimate concern be with welfare or happiness? This is so because, ultimately speaking, only happiness has intrinsic values (something good in itself). All other desiderata only have instrumental values in ultimately contributing to happiness.

This position is contrary to the categorical imperatives of Kant (1785/1993). However, I strongly rejected Kant’s argument in particular and for the exclusive intrinsic value of happiness in general (Ng 2022, Ch. 5). Most if not all arguments against this principle are based on the inadequate consideration of the effects on others and in the future.

Practical Implications of the Welfare Foundation

Less focus on GDP; More on environmental quality

The acceptance of the proposed welfare foundation for public policy has important practical implications. First, we should use the results of happiness studies to inform public policy. One important result is that, beyond a rather low level of income, additional consumption/income normally does not appreciably increase happiness in the long run.

“Thus, instead of focusing on GDP, public policy should emphasize other factors that are more important for happiness”

Though most people still want more income/ consumption, this is explained, among other factors, by the relative competition between individuals (higher incomes are offsetting at the social level as far as the relative aspect is concerned; see Easterlin 2017 on the Easterlin’s paradox; also Layard 2005 and Sherman et al. 2020) and the materialistic bias fostered by commercial advertising and the inborn accumulation instinct (Ng 2003). Thus, instead of focusing on GDP, public policy should emphasize other factors that are more important for happiness. Some such factors (like personal relationships; see Helliwell 2003, Bruni & Stanca 2008, Dolan et al. 2008, and World Happiness Report 2016/2023) may not be easily manageable by public policies, as important negative side effects may be involved.

However, other important factors, such as environmental protection, may be more amenable. For example, simply replacing/supplementing GDP with ERHNI (Environmentally responsible happy nation index which puts a positive emphasis on long and happy lives and a negative emphasis on environmental disruption; see Ng 2008, Chen et al. 2016) may serve some useful purposes.

A lower environmental quality does not only directly affect our happiness, but it also affects our health and hence lowers both our quality of life and our lifespans (Terradaily 2006, Ledford 2023). In addition, environmental disruption, including pollution and CO2 emission, will increase catastrophic risks, including global extinction (Rothman 2017, Butler 2018, Cavicchioli et al. 2019, Ng 2019, IPCC 2022). Moreover, global warming is coming faster than previously expected, even by environmental scientists (Walker & Loon 2023; see this piece also.

Promoting brain stimulation for common use

There are also ways to increase our happiness enormously opened up by science and technology that public policy may help to promote. In particular, it has been known for nearly sixty years (since Olds & Milner 1954) that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the pleasure centres in our brain, using electricity, magnetism, ultra-sound and other means, generates extreme pleasures (described as ‘super–pleasure’ or ‘supramaximal’ by Dror 2016.) DBS does not have the undesirable health effects of drug addiction (e.g. Frank 2018, Moisset 2020, Aceves-Serrano et al. 2022). It can also be made non-invasive and personalized (Tremblay et al. 2020, Figee & Mayberg 2021, Fried et al. 2021). It has been extensively used in medical therapies, especially in treating Parkinson’s disease (e.g. Cai et al. 2020), depression, and mental disorders (e.g. Coenen et al. 2018, Kisely et al. 2018, Liu et al. 2020, Fenoy et al. 2022, Figee et al. 2022), and post-traumatic stress disorder (e.g. Koek et al. 2019). DBS has also been extensively used for the amelioration of stress (Meeres & Hariz 2022), neuropsychiatric conditions (Babiloni et al. 2021), substance abuse (Hassan et al. 2021), reducing conduct disorders (Tuck & Glenn 2021), improving sleep quality and increasing optimism (Mohebbian et al. 2021).

Despite these medical applications and widespread academic discussion (e.g. Kuniyil & Varma 2020, Harmsen et al. 2022), the enormous potential benefits of DBS have not been developed for wider application for the promotion of general happiness. Public policies should play a much higher role in promoting research efforts and the eventual widespread use of DBS. After sufficient research on safety, either a home machine or stimulation centres should be made available for common usage, not just confined to medical treatment (Ng 2022, Ch.12). In the long run, what has a higher potential to increase our happiness is transforming ourselves, including through genetic engineering and brain-computer interface (Abo Alzahab et al. 2021). However, the public policy here has to be much more cautious, but more research may be appropriate right now.

Animal welfare and a need for large-scale interventions

Going beyond human happiness, public policy towards animals is also important. While the large-scale interventions to raise animal welfare may have to be left to the future (Ng 1995), now we should at least reduce animal suffering for those that we farm. In particular, mandating larger cage sizes for chickens may reduce their suffering enormously, at low and even negative (considering excessive meat consumption) costs to humans (Ng 2016). If we could reduce the suffering of our farmed animals to make their net welfare positive, there is no welfare grounds for refraining from eating meat. They would not have a life worth living if we do not farm and eat them.

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