Economist.com | The economics of happiness

Economist.com | The economics of happiness: "Among many things, the behaviourists have found that it is relative, not absolute wealth, that matters most to people. Mr Layard cites as evidence a study in which Harvard University students claimed to prefer earning $50,000 a year when their peers are on only $25,000 to a world in which they earn $100,000 while their peers get more than double that amount."

This seems obvious too. You are comparing yourself to people as close to you as possible, in order to gage whether your choices and innateness is what has given you success. A Harvard student does recognize that their fair competitor is another Harvard student, not an orphan from genocide in Rwanda. Their school counterparts are versions of themselves, that is, parallel lives, and the Harvard student is in a competition with the choices they could have made.

Likewise, neighbors who compare the greenness of each other's lawns are in competition with what else they could have done (after all they can't blame the weather - it was the same for their neighbor). The comparison of lawns is fair. Which is why so many hire designated hitters, the gardening services.