I went to Bhutan and looked up the surveys. The consensus seems to be they are happier than most countries at their (low) gdp per capita but probably not doing as well as the leading rich countries like Denmark etc.

I think the Bhutanese are a bit cynical about 'gross national happiness' which was invented on the fly by one of the kings.

FTA:

> Every five years, surveyors fan out across Bhutan measuring the nation's happiness. The results are analyzed and factored into public policy.

Or are you asking whether the results of the survey can be trusted?

> How do you know that people in Buthan were actually happy?

Honestly, that's kind of irrelevant to my comment. My points were to 1) decry a kind of obnoxious schadenfreude and 2) posit that our society is likely to lead to unhappiness because of it's focus on individual choice and technology to make various things "easier."

I do respect Bhutan for trying to take a different path, and I suspect they erred by not excluding enough (e.g. allowing the cancer of social media).