I think you've put your finger on the really sore spot.
One of the worlds that ARGeezer spoke about in his recent post on the Utopians. In fact the world we all try to come to grips with is the one in which we live, in which the gift of happiness is widely seen as diminishing your own, as if happiness is like nuts squirreled away for the winter. An apt if sad metaphor for a consumer society.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.