If the market does not substantially erode friendship and warm relations, perhaps it changes the nature of these relations, making them more invidious. This result would follow from what is said to be the market's encouragement of “conspicuous consumption,” rivalry, and other forms of invidiousness so vividly described by Veblen. In the first section of this chapter we will discuss the market's invitation to social comparison and its alleged consequences for the way we perceive each other. Whether or not rivalrous relations in the market are worse than elsewhere, friendships might still be disvalued when a choice must be made between friendly relations and material gain. As we shall see in the second section of this chapter, there is reason to believe that this devaluation would bring about the wrong choice: The quality of life studies show that anyone maximizing happiness should probably give friendship (and family relations) higher priority, for satisfaction with family life and actual numbers of friends contribute more to overall life satisfaction, and especially to happiness, than anything the market has to offer. If people followed this set of social priorities, however, they would have to defy the market to do so. The implications of this choice between friendship and income and the various hedonic standards to guide the choice are explored in this second section.

Social comparisons: the effect of the circumstances of others on the self

Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Smith, Veblen, and others have variously claimed that modern society encourages social comparison, Smith attributing it to human nature, Tocqueville to democratic egalitarianism, but both Montesquieu and Veblen attributing this tendency to market institutions.