Fred Hirsch in his 1977 book, Social Limits to Growth.65 The richer we become, the more of our desires for non-positional goods, such as basic food and shelter, are met; and the greater the fraction of our remaining as-yet unfulfilled desires pertain to positional goods, which are inherently scarce.

Individuals with less enterprise, drive, education, health, emotional stability, etc. are more likely to become unemployed.

The hedonic treadmill continuously retreats under our feet, making us keep running while preventing us from ever getting to any fundamentally cheerier place.

We could, of course, easily eliminate congestion by introducing congestion pricing. But instead, the solution that our society has adopted is—to buy a bigger car. One that raises the driver higher above the road, so that we can at least look down on the other poor sods while we wait for the traffic to move…

It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional society.

Ich danke Gott an jedem Morgen, daß ich nicht brauch’ für’s Röm’sche Reich zu sorgen!45

We, by contrast, we Homo cubiculi, needs must rely on self-discipline and structured incentives to get us to perform the requisite labors.

As Posner says, “the traditional aspiration of the English upper class was not to work at all”, and not to appear to care too earnestly about money.86 And in this respect, the Lotto lout, although solidly lower working class, actually exhibited a more aristocratic demeanor than people on the middle rungs of the social ladder.87

accessories. But a side effect of one person’s outlays on such goods is that they raise the bar for everybody else. The harder one person competes to make it into the elite, and the more time and money he devotes to out-strutting his rivals, the greater the costs that anyone else must bear if they wish to have a shot at being alpha. The result is a