Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.
I'm also not sure that mass emigration should be seen as an existential threat. Many developing economies have very successfully leveraged emigration and remittances as an engine of economic growth. If Bhutan can modernise into a more open economy, those young people could start returning home with the skills, experience and capital to do great things.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
https://www.nsb.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/1...
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2024/03/11/a-stron...
If I were tasked with improving Bhutan, one of the things I would focus on is probably lead. 3/4 of Bhutanese children have elevated levels of lead in their blood.
https://www.unicef.org/bhutan/press-releases/national-blood-...
Southern Bhutan’s Lhotshampa people, who were 100,000 mostly Hindu ethnic minority were cleansed under the “One Nation, One People” policy aimed at forced ethnic, cultural, and religious cohesion. They now live as refugees in Nepal.
Behind Bhutan's Shangrila facade is a discriminatory policies favoring Buddhists & Drukpa culture remain in place as do discriminatory citizenship laws and restrictions on civil, religious and linguistic rights.
If you don't get past the headline you might miss the most interesting part of this story. Bhutan is building a special economic-zone city, based on Singapore as a model, and designed by Bjarke Ingels. The renders are really striking, many of the major and most important buildings are designed to double as bridges over the river. Skip to 16:52 in the video to see the renders of the planned development "Gelephu Mindfulness City".
Bhutan is also quite energy rich due to hydroelectric power and have been dumping the excess into bitcoin.
> Bhutan is fifth among countries holding BTC, after the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bhutan-cashes-33-5b-bitcoin-0...
(Mistake in title, they've cashed out only $33 million, not billion.)
Bhutan sounds interesting. I would be very curious to know more about how life is there. Its one thing to provide certain things and prioritize happiness, it is another to provide fulfillment, which is what I suspect the countries young citizens leaving are finding to be the case.
Though, with university free, if Bhutan has good, solid universities and produces students in reasonable numbers, since the country appears to be a highly literate english speaking one, I could see them leveraging that to raise the economy by founding outsourcing firms etc.
Is it really prioritizing happiness tho? From Wikipedia:
> According to the World Happiness Report 2019, Bhutan is 95th out of 156 countries.
Not to mention its ethnic cleansing of the non-Buddhist population. There are definitely other things that have higher priority on the government's agenda than people's happiness.
King thinks democracy is a great idea. Everyone rejects it. King institutes it anyway.
Wait a second...
This article is an interesting case study in the difference between "monarchy" and "dictatorship". The way I think about it, the differences are as follows:
* Under monarchy, one person is chosen to rule "at random". Under dictatorship, there is a competition where the most ruthless person gets to rule.
* Under monarchy, the people believe the monarch rules by divine right. Under dictatorship, the dictator rules by fear.
* Monarchies are more stable, meaning the ruler can plan with a long time horizon. Dictators are more likely to siphon resources while the siphoning is good, since they fear a coup.
* Lacking popular legitimacy, a dictator is forced to consider the self-interest and loyalty of their underlings. This leads to extractive and regressive policy. See this excellent video explaining the game theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
* Under monarchy, criticism is kept in check while maintaining rule of law, via lèse-majesté laws which make it illegal to criticize the monarch. Under dictatorship, criticism is kept in check via repression. That same repression makes the dictator less popular, which triggers more criticism, and thus more repression, in a doom loop.
Monarchy is an imperfect system. A lot comes down to the person who is "randomly" chosen to rule. But I do wonder if monarchy should be considered an option in countries where democracy has been consistently dysfunctional and the population is poorly educated -- Haiti perhaps?
Most successful democracies were monarchies at some point in the past. Maybe it's just a phase of development a country needs to go through -- in order to achieve mass literacy and civics education, if nothing else.
They pursued happiness by ethnic cleansing of Nepalis.
It's why I can't look as a Bhutan as a good place. Bunch of hypocrites pretending to be saints.
The slant of the article is that there's brain drain from Bhutan. But the meat is more interesting. Apparently, Bhutan is building a charter-like city:
"A Bhutanese team is collaborating with experts around the world, seeking investors to help build the city, the cost of which is likely to run in the billions. The city will have its own legal framework modeled on Singapore's and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI."
I like this sentence in particular, which showcases an admirable pragmatism:
"When we say we follow the principles of Gross National Happiness, we do not mean we are happy with less… We also want to be rich. We also want to be technologically high standard."
There has been some buzz around charter cities lately, particularly Prospera in Honduras which has been seized by the government. Bhutan seems like the perfect place for this kind of experiment because it is peaceful, politically stable, and English is taught in schools.
There's a chance that we see more city-states like Singapore, Dubai, etc. These places offer something the US can't: social orderliness. Bhutan seems intent on preserving its national identity, which is also draw. Conversely, Dubai (and Neom, if it actually gets built) strike me as a bit soulless.
This probably very good news for Butan. The young people seeing the world, expanding their horizons
They will be back, especially when they have children
I am an interal migrant to a small city in Aotearoa (Ōtepoti) and it is striking how many people grew up here, left as youngsters, and came back to have children
Bhutan is not a basket case, it sounds like a good placecto raise a family (as is Ōtepoti, why I am here).
Exciting for Bhutan's future
Their "Happiness" marketing was always bullshit.
Ask the Lhotshampa (ethnic Limbu, Gurung, and other Janajatis) who were ethnically cleansed by the Ngalop majority 20-30 years ago.
It's a banana (tsampa?) monarchy that only exists as a buffer between India and China, and it's entire economy is basically owned by Tata Group (who owns and manages Bhutan's hydroelectric dam used for exports) and Indian construction companies (who build all the roads and resorts in the country).
Another factor not mentioned is that Bhutan is a tiny and quite isolated country; it's not at all unexpected that young people, who now have the means to go to other countries, would do so. It's a pretty natural thing. It's also possible that a number will return at some point -- enough time hasn't passed to see how this plays out.
When their smart young people leave to earn more money abroad, wouldn't it make sense to take smart young people from other countries that aren't that materialistic? Just asking for a friend...
Forbidding skyscrapers will prove counterproductive. People are leaving Bhutan for more money. Cities are more productive because they pack people close.
Bhutan can save it's nature and have cities. It can't retain its people without giving them better economic opportunities.
Young want freedom. They should be free to choose happiness or an alternate route. The problem is that Bhutan didn't provide that freedom and so now the young are leaving the country to find happiness their way.
Admittedly I'm not familiar with bhutan. Besides basics, and buddhism connections. Lets take a look.
>Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay believes it is ironically the success of Gross National Happiness that has made young Bhutanese so sought after abroad.
They are 95th place for GDP.
125th place for HDI.
I wouldn't even consider working on 'happiness' with the numbers that bad.
Bhutan's balance of trade appears to be entirely negative. So the country is getting poorer.
Their GDP numbers are 5% growth every year? That seems impossible.
3% unemployment and 65% participation rate.
Lets call it a ~4-5% inflation average or worse.
6.8% interest rate, while never ever being below 6%? So they target what 5%? So its not that GDP growth at 5% is impossible. They are essentially saying they havent had gdp growth in decades, they are hiding a major depression?
In the last 10 years Bhutan has doubled their money supply, while population is leaving? LOL incoming government collapse.
government debt to gdp is ~130%. 100% is the magical threshold you're not allowed to cross. If you're the federal reserve and Tbills reputation might allow you to go above 100% like the USA in 2020... but Bhutan has no such ability. They likely cant cross ~40% if i were to estimate.
Major deficit spending across the last 25 years.
Sales tax of 50%
Income tax of 30%
>Bhutan was, and is today, largely a subsistence agricultural society. Many families still live in multigenerational farmhouses.
I'd be leaving as well. Nobody is seeking Bhutan people. The bhutan people are fleeing the inevitable.
Bhutan is about 20% debt/gdp from a venezuela level collapse. If by some magic they dont collapse there, they are about 40% from a greece like collapse.
Bhutan is already about 10% higher than the Sri Lankan collapse.
Fleee Bhutan while you can.
Their northern neighbor infringing on the border and trying to reduce the size of the country?
> The city will have its own legal framework modeled on Singapore's and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI.
AI with an hydroelectric power supply? That's optimistic. At least the power-consuming part of this would have to be somewhere.
It's sad, but I'm sure there's a certain kind of person who's gloating over this. As in "Haha, those assholes wanted happiness, but my awesome capitalism wins everytime!1!! Join us at the bottom, suckers!!1!"
Personally, I kinda feel like people probably have perverse psychological impulses that cause us to make ourselves unhappy and discontented unless there's certain specific external constraints to control those impulses. Modern technology, in its quest to remove all constraint, eagerly removed the necessary ones.
It's sort of like fitness: way back, there was no such activity as "exercise," because everyone got enough as a matter of course (e.g. by farming, hunting, walking everywhere). Now no one has to do any of that, "exercise" is a new chore that requires willpower, so we're all getting fat.
Basically saying money can buy happiness
“...pandemic hit Bhutan's economy hard, shutting down tourism. Recovery has been slow..”
I wish them good luck however happiness does not put food on table.
TL;DR - The leaders of a highly-religious, homophobic, low-HDI, faux-democracy country get surprised when some of their people want to leave for greener pastures.
Turns out that inventing a specific measure of happiness that makes your country look more favorable than it is doesn't change reality.
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If my government did something as stupid as introduce a Gross national happiness metric, I would be getting out as soon as possible to avoid the gulags that will be following shortly. The most fascinating thing here is that these people managed to convince others that they are smart.
> Now this is, I say deliberately, the only defect in the greatness of Mr. Shaw, the only answer to his claim to be a great man, that he is not easily pleased. He is an almost solitary exception to the general and essential maxim, that little things please great minds. And from this absence of that most uproarious of all things, humility, comes incidentally the peculiar insistence on the Superman. After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby. Mr. Shaw cannot understand that the thing which is valuable and lovable in our eyes is man—the old beer-drinking, creed-making, fighting, failing, sensual, respectable man. And the things that have been founded on this creature immortally remain; the things that have been founded on the fancy of the Superman have died with the dying civilizations which alone have given them birth. When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob a coward—in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.
In the end, maximizing GDP per Capita pretty closely maximizes most positive social outcomes. Richer countries are happier, less lonely, kinder to each other, etc.
Despite the headline CBS gave the article, it seems the problem is not with happiness, but with the seductive appeal of materialism and the effects of exposing one culture to another.
Social comparison theory is the idea that our satisfaction with what we have isn't an objective measure, but is actually based on what we see other people have. Young people generally seem to have an innate desire to leave their hometowns and seek out what else might be waiting out there for them. When you add in globalization and media influence exposing them to what looks like a "better" life with more things, it's not surprising that they've seen ~9% of young people leave Bhutan.
The other question is, what will happen if Bhutan does increase their financial wealth as well as their happiness? Will they then see a net influx of people through immigration, looking for the lifestyle Bhutan promises? And will those new people be able to maintain the culture Bhutan has cultivated?
It sounds like the concept of Gross National Happiness is a successful one, on its own, but it brings new challenges that couldn't have been forseen originally. That doesn't mean they can't solve them without giving up their core values.