Tyler Cowen writes

Read Michael’s recent treatment of The Economics of Mozart. The bottom line? Mozart was a successful commercial entrepreneur. His economic problems stemmed from a war with Turkey, not the failures of the marketplace.

He should definitely have known better than to start a war with Turkey. That whole abduction from the seraglio business was a complete farce. Meanwhile—sorry, I’m not even going to pretend to link these comments—Matt Yglesias makes the following observation about Greg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox:

The real progress paradox isn’t “why doesn’t all our stuff make us happy” but rather, given that all our stuff pretty clearly doesn’t make us happy, how do we come to have all this stuff.

Which seems about right. An unwillingness to distinguish these two questions—or rather, the decision, for technical purposes, to treat them as if they were the same question—is a hallmark of modern economics. Robert E. Lane has a book that argues this point. Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer have a solid rejoinder from the economist’s point of view, arguing that money can indeed go a long way towards making you happy—but not as far, surprisingly, as democratic institutions and local political autonomy can.