• The so-called "Easterlin paradox," that improvement in material conditions does not produce additional happiness, is under current attack by behavioral economists who assert that the evidence adduced in its support has been defective. Veblen, of course, would say that it's a trivially-true outcome of the importance of relative rather than absolute pecuniary strength.

This assumes that satisfaction and self-worth can be attained through the pursuit of wealth, but what do the wealthy actually gain from their increased ability to possess? The most obvious result is affluence. They can afford to purchase what’s newest and best, and satisfy their immediate desires. However, since there will always be newer and better things to desire, this ability to purchase doesn’t result in a lasting sense of satisfaction, but instead an insatiable desire for more. There is a constant push to get a bigger house and a better car despite the stress of debt and work, submission, power harassment and general un-freedom required to attain these things. In addition, medical studies have recognized the connection between stress and heart disease in America, and the Japanese have coined the term Karoshi to describe the recent phenomenon of the sudden death of executives from overwork. Why go through this when a luxury car isn’t necessarily more reliable or beautiful than a standard car, and a pair of old jeans are more comfortable than a pair of business slacks?

• Japanese executives weren't undertaking overwork in order to make more money. American job stress results in large measure from the difficulties of the two-earner household--which is only in part a result of a desire for higher living standards, being also about the liberation of women from uncompensated household and sexual labor--and the savagery of the American employment system, which is more savage at lower levels of compensation. You're just throwing the kitchen sink at your argument, not sifting your evidence carefully.

The real achievement is not the possessions themselves, but rather the envy that an ability to possess inspires in others. When De Tocqueville conducted his study of American society in 1831, he observed an increase in status anxiety as a result of the move from a hierarchical to an egalitarian society.

• How could you possibly consider it a sufficient citation to deTocqueville to link an uncredited video on the net that claims to quote from it? Did you bother to go and look, or were you too daunted by the idea of searching through a classic book you haven't read for an idea you weren't sure was there but which someone who put a TV-clip at Google told you existed? You might want to look at volume 2, chapter 19, where deTocqueville's actual argument (which is not what Alain de Botton thinks it is) appears.

Unlike their counterparts in Britain who accepted the level they were born into, Americans were meant to be equals in terms of rights and opportunities, and therefore any disparities in wealth led to feelings of stress and envy if anyone else should have more. As a result of this phenomenon, those who can afford what others cannot enjoy a higher social status, but one that is based on envy rather than the respect or admiration people actually desire.

• This is Alain de Botton's completely absurd (and characteristically politically wrong-headed) bullshit, not de Tocqueville's; he is far too careful an observer not to be aware of class antagonism in English society.

• I think you have fooled yourself into believing that this sequence formed an argument; you won't fool the reader so easily. You have said that some people may deceive themselves into seeking wealth under the impression that wealth is "success," but that "success" is really "satisfaction and self-worth." A reader who doesn't happen to share your anti-consumerist cultural biases is likely to diagnose this as an arbitrary assumption rather than a conclusion.

• Inability to get pronouns to agree in number is not a price we have to pay for avoidance of sexual discrimination, even if you feel that "he" is always a masculine pronoun. You should not commit grammatical failings for reason of carelessness or ideological conviction, because solecisms of the kind often set off unconscious prejudices in others against you.

The lawyer who values justice will feel successful when they actually work to further justice in some respect. Thus self-interest is only at odds with the pursuit of justice under a dangerously shallow and inadequate interpretation of human interest. The American legal system and even the university are culpable in the degradation of the individual and in the encumbrance of justice by promoting these mistaken conceptions of value and monetarily incentivizing an indifference to justice.

• You have not shown, or even argued, that the pursuit of justice needs to be materially less rewarding than the pursuit of injustice. You have not shown that happiness for smart people should consist in indifference to material rewards. I don't think you can show that, because as a general proposition it is absurd. Some people may be indifferent to material reward so long as their needs for meaning in work are met, but many people aren't. I am one who isn't: I prefer to have enough money. I do not choose to have not enough money in order to make justice; I do not even choose to have only enough money with which to make justice. I prefer to have a great deal of money paid to me in order to make justice, and to share that money with other people in order to make justice too, while keeping a large share for myself. What argument do you make to me?