The final part of our mini-series on Superdemocracy carries the argument forward from business and governmental decision-making and political organization to the essentially social concerns of happiness and public wellbeing.

Recapping: Superdemocracy is ensuring that critical decisions are taken at the Point of Maximum Competence, a deceptively simple idea, difficult in practice, but with extraordinary benefits to the organization or state that uses it.

A new survey by the UK-based New Economics Foundation (NEF) has tried to measure the environmental efficiency of global progress with its “Happy Planet Index” report, which it believes paints a different order of world wellbeing.

The NEF said: “The Happy Planet Index strips the view of the economy back to its absolute basics: what we put in (resources), and what comes out (human lives of different length and happiness).”

Given that there are fewer than 200 nations on the planet, you may be surprised that the USA came in at #150. Mind you, it beat Russia into 172nd place. Even the UK at #108 can’t take any plaudits.

Out of Asian nations, Vietnam came highest at #12, which may seem counter-intuitive given its violent past. But then Buddhist countries have always scored well in this type of survey. Meanwhile, Singapore, a notoriously controlled state, was ranked lowest in Asia at #131.

African countries made up seven of the bottom 10, with crushed Zimbabwe — Mugabe’s vision of hell made manifest — not surprisingly coming last on the list.

The extraordinary feature of the report is that, while not setting out to examine Superdemocracy principles — I doubt the authors had been reading Syntagma — it clearly shows that where these principles are naturally present in a society, people are a lot happier.

The West does poorly overall largely because critical decisions are taken at inappropriate levels and people are left feeling cut off from large parts of their own lives. With the state controlling most things, “leisure” has been substituted for the satisfaction of taking care of yourself, your family and even your local governance.

A simple phasing in of Superdemocracy would make a huge difference to wealth, health and happiness as I hope I’ve demonstrated over these three posts.

Now reread Part 1. Note: You are not being brainwashed.