Core-Periphery?

We were short of time on Friday and I had to give up my chance to speak, so here, I'd like to write a little more of my thoughts about globalization.

First of all, let's start by having everyone's consensus on two points.

1st - The point of (economic) wealth is to earn more "happiness".
2nd - "Happiness," in this case, can be measured only by how a person himself describes his own level of happiness. In other words, I am the only person who has right to say whether or not I'm happy. Other people's judgment on my happiness is irrelevantly subjective, and likewise, I hold no right to measure other people’s level of happiness.

If we agree with these two conditions, I find it difficult to agree with the whole idea of globalization and core-periphery system. As I said, statistics show that people who are relatively wealthier than other people are happier, not the people who are absolutely wealthy. (it looks like this http://images.google.co.kr/imgres?imgurl=http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1107/images/02Wellbeing-1.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1107/HTML/docshell.asp%3FURL%3D02Wellbeing.asp&usg=__J0nvlkmCpG6P4MEl9mz-1ENJ5g0=&h=262&w=492&sz=4&hl=ko&start=19&um=1&tbnid=39JkR81x5MyTKM:&tbnh=69&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLevel%2Bof%2Bhappiness%2Bnations%26um%3D1%26complete%3D1%26hl%3Dko%26lr%3D%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DN although not quite identical) For instance, according to data I found a couple years ago, people from Bangladesh describe themselves happier than Americans do for themselves.

There are two types of ‘other’ people. One is the people who are living close by within a nation, and the other is the people who live in neighboring countries. The data I used explicitly illustrate that people tend to be happier as long as they are wealthier (or not poorer by significant amount) than one(or both) of the two types. This means, although globalization might help developing countries in numbers, when we are considering the real effect, it’s actually degrading their level of happiness.

One person said during our discussion group: “Isn’t it still better as long as countries are producing more?” Well, the thing is, who are we to judge what ‘better’ really means. If we go back to the second premise I made earlier, I do not have any right to say they are being better off (let’s say ‘better off’ means ‘having more happiness’). As long as the people of developing countries say they are happy, who are we to decide which is ‘better’ for them? The relative wealth determines who’s happy, not the absolute wealth.

In short, it all comes down to one point: we do not have the right to say what makes them happy, simply because we are not them. If we agree with the two previously stated pre-conditions, it seems impossible to think how core-periphery system benefits developing nations under the World-system Theory.