Governing with the Goal of Happiness

Our real goal in life is happiness. Promoting happiness should be the primary goal of government, and it will be in my administration.

By their focus on GDP growth, their personal power, national power, and serving corporations and billionaires, our leaders and Congress have created the most depressed, anxious, lonely, and mentally ill society in human history.

Our leaders have given social media companies free rein to do anything they want to addict us and destroy our mental health and happiness. Why? Because those social media giants and the billionaires that own them pay for their campaigns.

The solution is not more GDP. The solution is more human connection and more control over our own lives. With Jury Democracy, where we the people make the decisions, we will have control over our own lives. And we will govern with the goal that matters to us--happiness and quality of life, not more GDP.

I will propose creative ideas to juries to promote happiness and reduce loneliness, such as:

Requesting that we wear name tags in public (I cannot take credit for this idea. I think Kramer on Seinfeld first came up with it.)
Requesting that we all go for a walk outside at 2:00 every Thursday to get a little exercise and fresh air and meet your neighbors.
Shutting down social media one day per week or at least one day per month to break our addiction and promote interacting face to face.
Banning social media for children
Reducing the work week to 32 hours.
Ideas to promote dog ownership and connection to nature.

What is the primary goal in life? I think it is happiness. Ultimately, each of us primarily wants to be happy. We want money, a good romantic relationship, friends, a meaningful job, a great new phone, a million TikTok followers, and other things, but we want those ultimately because we think they will make us happy. (By happiness of course, I do not mean just pleasure but something deeper than that. And I should say that to become happy, perhaps the best strategy is to focus on others and making them happy.)

Since happiness is our primary goal as people, it should also be the primary goal of government. I don’t think it is. Our government and our system behave like their primary goal is maximizing aggregate GDP growth—not even per capita GDP or individual economic wellbeing but just aggregate GDP, the total size of the economy. That will not be my primary goal as senator; my primary goal will be to increase the average level of happiness or per capita happiness, including especially minimizing depression and loneliness.

We should measure and track those things with at least as much care and specificity as we measure and track economic measures like GDP.

Some of these proposals may strike you as whimsical, but I am serious about them. Ordinary politicians propose tax breaks to bring some business to town that will hopefully generate a few jobs for a few years. That does nothing to make us happier, and happiness is really what we are after in life. My proposals above really will help to make us at least a little happier, less depressed, and less lonely.

Books: Work