<<< But, in 1970 some sociologists did surveys of teenagers all over the world to see who are the happiest teenagers? Who feel best about their world their lives? And the three groups of teenagers that were regarded as the happiest teenagers in the world in 1970 were in Israel, Cuba, and Chile. And those were highly non-commercial cultures, all three of them.
But it's interesting to look at Chile. Chile at that time was a very democratic society, very high rate of voter turn-out, the most political society, arguably, in the world, certainly the Third World. They had a coup d'etat, they established a so-called "free market economy", and they consciously tried to de-politicize the people when they reinstated democracy. And now it's a highly commercial culture.
If you go to Chile today, the middle class of Chile is brand name conscious. They don't know anything about politics. And now they've got one of the most depressed teenagers in the group. But it's considered a great victory in The New York Times and in our media because it's a free society now. It's a democracy, but it's also a society where people aren't very happy and it's obsessed with brand names. >>>
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