ife can have so many moving parts that move quite quickly. Understanding how things are going can be pretty complex, so it’s good to have a good way to do a status-check. This means looking at specific things, like health and social life and income and path and more, as they fit into the broader picture – are they contributing to my happiness?
I think it’s safe to assume that, while there may be people who strive for wealth for the sake of wealth, the majority of people who are prioritizing wealth in their life are really seeking happiness. Sure, a modest amount of income is necessary to achieve happiness, but happiness is not a given part of wealth. As new research says, “the happiness value of the next dollar you earn is always worth less than the one you earned before it.” Which makes me ask:
If people are seeking happiness, and wealth does not equal happiness, why do we as a society measure well-being based heavily in terms of income and wealth?
A few weeks back, an interviewee on a Bloomberg TV segment on the sharing economy‘s impact on the the broader economy commented that the rise of the sharing economy is “signaling in some respects a slow lowering of standard of living.” The conversation went on to hint that even as the traditional sense of standard of living may be declining, people are still able to and are finding new means to meet their needs, “allowing people to enrich their lives a little bit more.”
I immediately wondered, ‘People are finding new means to meet their needs, is this a real lowering of standard of living? And is it necessarily a bad thing?’ Or perhaps the better question is, is the sharing economy’s helping us to abandon lackluster indicators, like the traditional notion of standard of living which is based on income, for more representative and relevant ones?
I first learned about the sharing economy when I was living in San Francisco. I didn’t – and still choose not to – own a car. But there are times when cars come in handy, and like when we needed to transport our new bed from the store to our new apartment. Not wanting to pay the membership fee for a Zip Car or the expense of delivery movers, I decided to give Getaround a go. Getaround is a site where people rent their cars out to other people. There’s no membership fee, and the sign-up process is relatively quick and painless for people with US-issued drivers licenses. My first experience was so enjoyable, I decided to use Getaround again when we decided to take a day trip down the beautiful US Highway 1 to Monterrey. This time, we had found a car that was walking distance from our apartment that we enjoyed so much we decided to use it again on the next trip we took across the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods.
I tend to be an early adopter and advocate of social enterprises, but this experience with Getaround sealed the deal for me on the sharing economy. It made sharing a car between two perfect strangers not only easy but enjoyable for both sides. I felt empowered to explore the beautiful city and state I was living. I also felt a sense of shared responsibility and connection to the people from whom I rented their vehicles. I got to know some of my neighbors and I was helping them bring in a little extra money. I saved a lot of money. Above all, I felt freedom from the burden of the car payments and the insurance and the maintenance and the parking that comes with owning a car. When I owned a car, I never appreciated it in this way, except for on the first day of spring where it was warm enough to roll down the windows and drive the most tree-covered back roads with music blasting. I could do that with Getaround with a fraction of the environmental, social, and financial cost.
It’s important to make the distinction between standard of living and quality of life.
Standard of living is “the necessities, comforts, and luxuries enjoyed or aspired to by an individual or group.’ It is based on income. Quality of life, on the other hand, is much harder to quantify. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s said, it has “long been accepted that material well-being, as measured by GDP per person, cannot alone explain the broader quality of life in a country. One strand of the literature has tried to adjust GDP by quantifying facets that are omitted by the GDP measure – various non market activities and social ills such as environmental pollution.” These hard to quantify elements have a very real impact on the material well-being, and even the traditional sense of standard of living, even though our national indicators do not take them into account. Think about it: standard of living is an abstract gauge of well-being with money, yet we forget that money is an abstract gauge for things with real value – the craft we put our blood and sweat into, the food that nourishes us, the homes that protect us. Seth Godin said it: “We keep coming up with new things to measure (like processor speed, heat output, column inches) but it’s pretty rare that those measurements are actually a proxy for the impact or quality we care about.” The problem with standard of living is that it is a preordained standard of ‘aspirations’, but aspirations are changing (not to mention are quite varied). We see more and more people following that train of thought, for example, as blogs and books on minimalism are in unprecedented demand. Above all, it just does not measure what we care about: happiness.
I fit into that category of people whose standard of living, in the traditional sense of the word, is in decline. Part of it is that I am on the cusp of the millennial generation and the state of the economy has not been helpful, but a much larger part of it is that I’ve chosen to forgo the traditional roles that left me feeling disengaged and a null sum contributor to society. For me, it’s more important to explore the boundaries of what is accepted as norm and whether that norm is relevant or constructive today.
My ‘standard of living’ is in decline because I’ve prioritized quality of life.
I am fortunate to be able to make that choice. It occurs to me often enough that there is no rhyme or reason why I should have that privilege when another person who is not so different to me does not have that choice. But with more innovative solutions on the rise like the sharing economy, maybe she will. Already, the sharing economy is making it easier to improve quality of life.
As Seth Godin went on to say, “It takes a lot of guts to stop measuring things that are measurable, and even more guts to create things that don’t measure well by conventional means.” Perhaps the sharing economy can help us adopt a more relevant standard of living indicator that considers well-being, the environment, health, as well as income. One that gauges what we really care about, so we can better create the lives we want to live.
Originally posted on Texture Transcribed.
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