CHRIS OVERLAND
AS I get older my bewilderment grows about the human propensity to acquire and consume wealth far beyond their personal or familial needs, often at the expense of others.
Why do some of us feel so driven to do this even though our better selves know that it is neither necessary nor, in many respects, likely to make our lives much happier?
A recent study in Australia strongly indicated that increases in personal income beyond around $A80,000 pa (which is, by world standards, a very large amount of money) do not significantly increase a person's happiness, well-being or sense of financial security.
In fact, in a surprising number of cases, it can make things worse by encouraging consumption patterns that generate more stress than satisfaction.
I suppose this helps explain why Australians are, on a per capita basis, the most indebted people in the world.
It seems that despite our desire to accumulate wealth, it turns out that many of us are actually very bad at managing it when and if we achieve our capitalistic ambitions.
The traditional capitalist view is that an individual's pursuit of personal benefit will inevitably result in an overall benefit to society.
Historic experience suggests that while this idea is broadly correct, state intervention is always necessary to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth than might otherwise be achieved through the so-called "trickle down" effect.
This is so because, unsurprisingly, the rich mostly do not share their wealth very willingly and thus taxation systems have to be devised to ensure that they do.
In a Papua New Guinean context, the state has conspicuously failed to protect and nurture the interests of ordinary citizens, preferring instead to favour economic predation upon the national wealth in the interests of a privileged few.
It is not alone in this nor the worst offender: think of Zimbabwe, Zaire, Venezuela to name but a few cases of the nation's wealth being squandered by a combination of incompetence, corruption and ideological idiocy.
So, Dolarose, the world is indeed unfair but it doesn't need to be.
You don't have to be a communist to understand that a more equitable distribution of resources is quite possible but it seems that human nature constitutes a formidable barrier to making the world a fairer place.
I have long since given up believing that I will live to see any material change in how the world works. Perhaps future generations will be able to do that which my generation has so conspicuously failed to do.