I suggest that we should be puzzled because while we experience satiation every day, this accumulation of money is not operating from satiation. As Gilbert notes, we eat one stack of pancakes, but turn down the second stack because we are full. We are satiated. He suggests that this is the obvious answer. However, with money, we don’t get satiated. We keep wanting to acquire more money. This is addiction, not satiation.
False Beliefs and Societal Benefits
Gilbert (Gilbert, 2006, p. 239) offers his own conclusions regarding the need for money. It has to do with a false belief supported by our society:
“. . . most of us get up with a desire to do what we want, which is to say that the fundamental needs of a vibrant economy and the fundamental needs of a happy individual are not necessarily the same. So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy’s needs but not their own? . . . People want just one thing—happiness—hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy. If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies.”
I would suggest that Gilbert is hovering at this point on a Neo-Marxist perspective regarding the false beliefs held by a specific society. For a Neo-Marxist such as Erich Fromm (1955), the false belief centers finding happiness (and filling an empty hole of alienation) by the use of money to buy things (fostering a consumer-based economy). Others, such as Christopher Lasch (1979), are likely to point out that we live in a narcissistic culture where the accumulation of money leads to an expansion of one’s sense of personal worth and value.
Regardless of the foundational reason for the broad-based valuing of money, Gilbert (Gilbert, 2006, pp. 241-242) points to the reasons that sustain this valuing:
“. . . the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth. Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being.”
Gilbert (2006, p. 242) moves far away from Neo-Marxism when offering a cautious, feedback-looping (“super-replicator”) perspective:
“Although words such as delusional may seem to suggest some sort of shadowy conspiracy orchestrated by a small group of men in dark suits, the belief-transmission game teaches us that the propagation of false beliefs does not require that anyone be trying to perpetrate a magnificent fraud on an innocent populace. There is no cabal at the top, no star chamber, no master manipulator whose clever program of indoctrination and propaganda has duped us all into believing that money can buy us love. Rather, this particular false belief is a super-replicator because holding it causes us to engage in the very activities that perpetuate it.”
Gilbert offers yet another perspective that relates specifically to any consideration of the link between happiness and money. Gilbert’s (Gilbert, 2006, p. 260) perspective is founded on an analysis of utilities offered by Daniel Bernoulli:
