[HN Gopher] We should measure well-being instead of failing to m...
___________________________________________________________________
We should measure well-being instead of failing to measure economic
productivity
Author : nickt
Score : 250 points
Date : 2022-10-10 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bengoertzel.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bengoertzel.substack.com)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Interesting idea but I am very skeptical that you could collect
| enough data on people to tease out how much their new toaster or
| app is contributing to their well-being.
|
| Self selection and lack of random controls will always thwart
| such an effort.
|
| It is still an interesting concept philosophically, and worthy of
| consideration.
|
| I'm not too sure where the line is between a well being catalysis
| metric and old fashioned utils.
|
| It is well understood that people can over or under pay for the
| utility of their purchases.
| pier25 wrote:
| That's what the current Mexican president says but it's a really
| a way to dismiss the economic disasters of his government.
|
| There's really no happiness without fulfilling basic human needs
| like health, education, security, etc. That cannot be achieved
| without a healthy economy.
|
| It's very easy for someone living in a "first world" country to
| take fundamental stuff for granted. I know I did before moving
| from Europe to Mexico years ago.
| andrewla wrote:
| We should stop failing to measure economic productivity, but
| instead of switching to failing to measure well-being we should
| just stop fetishizing the idea of measuring macroeconomic or
| sociological phenomena.
|
| The economic metric treadmill looks something like "we want to
| measure 'economic productivity', which is a term that has a
| colloquial meaning". Second, create a formal definition that
| almost, but not quite, matches the colloquial meaning. Third, try
| to measure it in the past using available proxy metrics. Fourth,
| try to measure it in the present using new proxy metrics. Fifth,
| try to measure it in the future by introducing new measurements.
|
| The sixth and most complex phase is to stitch together all those
| measurements as though they are measuring the same thing, and
| then via sleight of hand to use the colloquial meaning of the
| name of the metric to derive some sort of conclusion.
|
| Now we get to play the game of repeating steps 3, 4, and 5 in
| order to draw interesting and new conclusions, and best of all,
| to try to guide policy decisions to increase "economic
| productivity" by instead guiding policy decisions to increase the
| metric for "economic productivity", yielding results that are
| invariably nonsensical.
|
| Once you see this pattern it becomes impossible to not see it
| everywhere in econometric research. Even things like "GDP" or
| "DJIA" are insanely stitched-together pseudo-metrics that we just
| pretend are actually measuring something but are completely
| disconnected from reality because of their use in policy-making.
| crote wrote:
| And that is exactly what New Zealand started doing in 2019[0].
|
| A large problem with metrics is that they have a tendency of
| becoming a goal of their own. Instead of them being used as mere
| indicators, we end up with entire countries whose sole goal is to
| eternally increase their GDP - to the extent that it ends up
| harming the general population.
|
| People do not solely exist to generate revenue, and it is about
| time we stop pretending they do.
|
| [0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/07/11/new-
| ze...
| warpeggio wrote:
| > A large problem with metrics is that they have a tendency of
| becoming a goal of their own.
|
| I read this in Project to Product:
|
| "As companies get larger and more complex, there's a tendency
| to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and
| it's dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.
|
| A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you
| so you can serve customers. But if you're not watchful, the
| process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in
| large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the
| result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make
| sure you're doing the process right." --Jeff Bezos
| Nition wrote:
| "It is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous
| habits of thought. One is that, while all important
| enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization
| that needs organizing, rather than the enterprise." - Terry
| Pratchett, from Thief of Time (2001)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think New Zealand has stopped calculating GDP. They do
| both now
| Aunche wrote:
| > we end up with entire countries whose sole goal is to
| eternally increase their GDP
|
| What countries are you talking about? I don't know of a single
| country that does this.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| China for the longest time judged officials based on how much
| they were hitting or exceeding GDP targets set out in the 5
| year plans.
|
| This has become less so only fairly recently.
| uoaei wrote:
| I thought it seemed obvious that the social credit score is
| an estimate of one's expected value of contribution to GDP.
| Aunche wrote:
| Clearly China's sole goal isn't GDP growth when they're
| still trying to pursue zero-covid.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Dying is very bad for GDP.
|
| >We confirm that both mortality and morbidity have a
| negative effect on GDP per capita growth. The effect of
| reducing mortality by 10 percent is that of adding at
| least 9.6 percentage points to GDP per capita growth over
| a period of about one quarter century, according to [13]
| bounding strategy.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| Eternal lockdowns and keeping kids from going to school
| also has an impact on GDP/productivity.
| Aunche wrote:
| That's a general trend. Obviously it's not going to apply
| to every case. Usually, reducing mortality is about
| improving healthcare and nutrition, especially during the
| period your study tracked (1990-2014). Keeping working
| age people healthy is obviously going to increase their
| productivity. This is very different from shutting down
| an entire city due to a few dozen Covid cases.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Given how overwhelming majority of Covid deaths are
| elderly and sickly people, it is virtually guaranteed
| that on net, Covid deaths themselves are positive for the
| economy. The elderly overwhelmingly have their productive
| years behind them, and in the retirement, they mostly
| consume the resources instead of producing them. So no,
| Covid deaths are not bad for GDP. Situation would have
| been much different if the Covid victims were younger and
| healthier on average.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is that COVID patients overwhelm medical
| systems and end up causing other types of mortality to
| rise too.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Part of the issue (at least in public discourse) seems to be
| the conflation of "revenue" in the narrow sense of being
| measured in money, with "utility" or "value" or "welfare" in
| the broad sense.
| trendroid wrote:
| >A large problem with metrics is that they have a tendency of
| becoming a goal of their own.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| ummonk wrote:
| Lol author complains about voodoo measurements but then proposes
| a much more voodoo measurement.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| "We should not measure Economic Productivity" isn't a great
| start.
|
| Increasing well-being is a laudable goal, but it's nebulous in
| concept and in specifics even more tricky. "Well being" belongs
| in the world of political or philisophical discourse, but as a
| basis for economic planning is probably not going to be useful.
|
| But now that we mention politics, we already have proxies for
| measurement of well-being. In western democracies the people vote
| for the politicians (or policies) that they believe will increase
| their well-being. So the polls and vote tallies are one form of
| measurement. One of the government's roles, as policy maker, is
| to balance the needs of the people with the ability to provide
| those needs.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The first part of this just boils down to "it's hard" and the
| second is a pure fantasy description of how governments are
| maybe supposed to work but none ever has in precisely that way.
|
| These are both useful lines of reasoning in some conquests but
| I don't find them so in this one.
| ralph84 wrote:
| Only a minority of the people living in the US are registered
| to vote. An even smaller minority actually vote. A vanishingly
| smaller minority decides who is on the ballot via campaign
| contributions. Not sure voting results are a proxy of anything
| for the majority of people.
| ySocMedia wrote:
| Numerous studies have spent 10s of millions trying to determine
| which leadership style and which technology made workers more
| economically productive.
|
| The result was always too many variables creating an
| impenetrable mess of logic with no practical value. The
| research was almost unproductive economic activity except it
| made the researchers realize we are terrible at macro level
| measure of anything but movement of literal things.
|
| Inferring numbers today from past economic truth is not
| intelligent guidance but biasing inequality into the system
| from past imperialism. A whole lot of our rich would not be
| without our government meddling. What I don't need is
| government pissing off the world to normalize business
| conditions for aristocrats who don't do real work of keeping
| themselves alive.
| ySocMedia wrote:
| jawadch93 wrote:
| titanomachy wrote:
| Below a graph showing 2% growth year over year: "The lack of
| exponential increase in labor productivity is sometimes used as
| an argument that tech innovation has slowed down in recent
| decades..."
|
| Steady two-percent growth _is_ exponential growth. The
| "exponent" is 1.02.
| 3qz wrote:
| This is dumb. We measure productivity because that's what the
| people with the power to choose the important metrics care about.
| There's no "we" that gets to choose anything! They don't care
| about your wellbeing and would happily make you eat bugs if it
| meant their favourite numbers would go in the right direction.
| archon1410 wrote:
| Hey, bug eating can be fun from a well-being perspective too.
| Some utilitarians will make you eat bugs of it meant their
| favourite numbers (yes, your well-being is a number) would go
| in the right direction. But it probably isn't, maybe a vegan
| diet is what the utilitarians recommend.
| 3qz wrote:
| I will not eat the bugs
| jacobolus wrote:
| Except for arbitrary cultural conditioning, there's really
| nothing wrong with eating bugs. People who live in the forest
| eat bugs all the time. At industrial scale I could well believe
| that bugs would be a better food source than some of our
| current staples, and if bugs were cheaply available and other
| foods had all of their external costs priced in, I could
| imagine substantial numbers of city dwellers choosing to eat
| bugs. (Which is not to say that anyone should be forced to eat
| any particular food.)
| sisu2022 wrote:
| 3qz wrote:
| Stop trying to convince me to eat bugs
| klyrs wrote:
| Have some m&m's instead!
| seabriez wrote:
| I disagree here. I think this change is necessary for society
| to evolve. Society is not a static thing and just because
| things have been done a certain way, doesn't mean it is right.
| My suspicion is we are doing many things wrong, electricity
| hasn't even been invented for much more than 100 years, yet we
| organize ourselves in a similar way as we have been for
| millennia. If we do need to change, then what? Well-being may
| be a great measure, in fact I think it may be the only measure.
| There are many concerns like gaming, lying, or corruption. But
| I think with the challenges can be minimized; why? Well
| induction, if we had this current economic system with all it's
| faults work, then why can't well-being be another metric?
| Moreover, I think this is exactly the step we need to make
| because part of the reason this earth is dying is because
| humans have prioritized materialistic exploitation. We need to
| move on from those notions, and if well-being is the new
| metric, then that sounds great to me.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| It's funny, I commented about this a few months back saying
| happiness is a better indicator than GDP and people were so
| offended by the mere suggestion.
|
| Edit: Clearly no one is offended, hyperbole is a lost art form,
| and happiness is at all-time highs judging by the responses I
| got.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > people were so offended by the mere suggestion
|
| That seems a large stretch when describing someone called
| "blocked_again" asking "is this sarcasm?"
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I don't think it's a stretch, asking if it's sarcasm is a
| pretty charged response.
| pessimizer wrote:
| "People" is the stretch, if it was "person."
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Also, no one appeared to be offended.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Shall we argue about something we can only speculate
| about?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think there's an argument for what you were
| saying. If you disagree, feel free to justify. You keep
| replying, so I'm curious as to where you want to go with
| this.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Sorry I am not as much of a pedant as you would like.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Indicator of what and for what?
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Of the real performance of the economy.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Circular logic.
|
| Happiness is a better metric of how well the economy is
| producing happiness.
|
| GDP is is a better metric of how well the economy is
| producing products.
|
| This of course ignores the core questions of IF the economy
| produces happiness, CAN he economy produce happiness, and
| how the relationship might work.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| > how well the economy is producing happiness.
|
| This is what is being measured. It is the "real" progress
| happening in the economy. There's no circular logic, you
| can measure multiple things at once.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why do you say it is real?
|
| Economy is but one factor that _maybe_ feeds into
| happiness.
| tkk23 wrote:
| Bhutan is a country that does improve on well-being. They measure
| Gross National Happiness (GNH). That should give a first
| approximation of the potential of that idea.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness
| im3w1l wrote:
| The issue with GDP-replacements is that GDP is a good proxy for
| many things, not just one. GDP / capita is a proxy for well
| being. GDP is a proxy for how credit worthy a country is. It's
| good proxy for how well a country could wage war if they switched
| to war economy. It's proxy for how much slack there is in the
| system that could be used to deal with bad times.
| liampulles wrote:
| I want the government to be accountable to a metric they can't
| fernagle with. Something that can be compared to years previous,
| and nations varied.
|
| I'm not sure well being metrics currently (or perhaps can ever
| even in principle) fit the bill.
| akomtu wrote:
| If you ever become so powerful that you can dictate what the
| gov of a 350 mln nation should do, you'll find it difficult to
| constrain yourself with a made up metric that you "can't
| fernangle with".
| this15testing wrote:
| it's interesting seeing our intentional or subconscious goal of
| "dominating" nature disconnect us further from the planetary
| systems that we are a part of. The economy and money was
| _invented_ by us. Putting the economy 's well-being in front of
| the human's or the earth's was very plainly a mistake.
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| Oh man, that's so true. And a universal definition of "well-
| being" is super easy. It's just like, things that are good you
| know? Not bad things but good things. A new society is possible.
| Closi wrote:
| Funnily enough when you look at the countries in the 'happiness
| index' they all happen to be countries which fundamentally have
| pretty good underlying economies (and often they tend to be from
| european countries that have decent social support structure).
|
| Well-being is probably a third-order effect from a strong
| economy, good healthcare / social care, culture and a variety of
| other factors. But because it is a third-order it is very hard to
| measure the impact of policy, because:
|
| * They are 'arms length' from policy changes.
|
| * The indexes are slow to respond to changes.
|
| * They are noisy and affected by unrelated factors (i.e. does a
| colder winter decrease happiness?)
|
| * A policy which improves well-being today could very well
| decrease well-being far into the future (e.g. increasing a
| countries spending and decreasing tax).
| aeternum wrote:
| A key consideration should be how easy it is to 'game' well-
| being measurements.
|
| It's pretty hard to game economic measurements as a whole.
| Metrics with smaller scope are generally much easier to game so
| while they may be a slightly more accurate measurement
| initially, they may be more vulnerable to corruption.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I'd argue that politicians have completely gamed the U-3
| unemployment rate based on their positions toward gig work,
| part time work, minimum wage, etc.
|
| The various unemployment metrics used to be highly
| correlated, but they've diverged in recent decades.
|
| And you can absolutely dial up GDP without dialing up median
| income per capita as well.
| com2kid wrote:
| > It's pretty hard to game economic measurements as a whole.
|
| Two immediate examples:
|
| Healthcare and GDP.
|
| Military Spending and GDP.
|
| If a genie wish made everyone healthy and brought about world
| peace, The US's GDP would drop, quite dramatically!
| aeternum wrote:
| >If a genie wish made everyone healthy and brought about
| world peace, The US's GDP would drop, quite dramatically!
|
| Would it? 'We must invest in a strong military to keep the
| peace!' and 'Everyone is healthy, lets invest in
| preventative care and longevity to keep it that way!'
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| The US could easily take much of that military funding
| and put it into infrastructure, job programs and
| healthcare spending and allow European countries to
| increase their military spending. This would keep our GDP
| and reduce our deficit with tax collection.
|
| Every time I suggest this, however, I seem to be
| downvoted into oblivion and poopooed by the Europeans on
| the forum. I guess a more isolationist policy isn't that
| great of an idea after all.
| nradov wrote:
| It's easy to game military spending metrics depending on
| what you choose to include. For example, some countries
| include pension payments for retired veterans and others do
| not.
| pydry wrote:
| I remember about a decade ago I was living in Singapore and
| there was a minor controversy coz the country appeared near
| the bottom of some "happiness" country ranking. A lot of
| people felt vindicated by this.
|
| The government got really mad and decided, in true
| Singaporean fashion that the only logical solution was to
| create their own metric and ranking. One where,
| coincidentally they were #1/#2 happiest instead of #1/2
| unhappiest. A completely different set of people felt equally
| vindicated by this.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Good well-being should be the desired outcome. It should be the
| measurement by which "success" is determined.
|
| What tools are necessary to achieve good well-being should be
| the topic of research and political debate.
|
| I think the problem we have today is that, politicians in
| particular, are only interested in the metrics that make their
| preferred tools look good. So a hard line socialist is inclined
| to ignore the benefits a free market provides and focus solely
| on how state-run programs can solve everything. On the flip-
| side, conservatives see a strong economy, put all their faith
| behind the free market, and ignore the proven effectiveness
| social programs have in areas where capitalism struggles like
| healthcare.
| andrepd wrote:
| Well the most conspicuous thing is that the countries that top
| these indices have mixed economies with a heavy degree of
| public participation, plus high and progressive taxation and a
| strong social safety net.
| elif wrote:
| Perfect summary of fukuyama neoliberalism.
|
| After 3 decades of US etc. travelling backwards on nearly every
| index despite economic expansion, and people are still buying
| it.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| How does one obtain a realistic and reliable measure of the
| 'happiness index' for any particular country? I imagine this is
| something that's subject to massive propaganda efforts (for
| example, East Germany attempted to keep its suicide rate hidden
| from view, at least according to the movie 'The Lives of
| Others').
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's tricky - also because it's very hard to aggregate
| 'happiness'; for economy you can reasonably get the total and
| just calculate an average, but any 'happiness' measure
| inherently has to be bottom-up and then the differences
| between subpopulations in a single country become critical.
|
| Like, someone can compare their well-being at San Francisco
| versus Paris and see which one is better but that would be a
| comparison of well-being _for them_ which won 't necessarily
| hold for Parisians and SanFranciscans of a different income
| level or with different cultural values - while wealth can be
| compared directly in a mostly objective manner (e.g.
| adjusting for purchasing parity).
| WalterBright wrote:
| I suspect that different cultures apply different meanings to
| "happiness". Heck, if you ask the same person on different days
| how happy he is, I bet you get different answers. I don't see
| how such a measure across cultures can be reliable.
| voisin wrote:
| Is the well-being a result of a strong economy or vice versa?
| You seem to assume directionality that might be the opposite.
| Perhaps workers not fearful of losing their healthcare if they
| leave their jobs are more productive, or do more broad
| schooling because there is less pressure to immediately start
| making money to avoid poverty, and this leads to more
| productivity or innovation.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It certainly goes both ways.
|
| But in one direction you have more wealth enabling people to
| live better, and on the other direction you have people with
| better lives being able to work better. It is very clear
| those effects do not have the same intensity.
| voisin wrote:
| A few things worth mentioning: in the countries highest on
| the happiness indices, taxes are also among the highest in
| the world, and distribution of wealth less skewed.
| argentinian wrote:
| There are also countries with low happiness indices and
| high taxes.
| voisin wrote:
| I am not arguing that high taxes alone make people happy.
| biomcgary wrote:
| If more financially homogeneous (i.e., less wealth skew)
| societies are happier, would you expect more culturally
| homogeneous (i.e., shared norms/history) societies to be
| happier?
| voisin wrote:
| I would expect this to be true to some degree, with
| declining marginal returns to homogeneity after some
| point maybe even tipping negative with too much
| homogeneity.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| There seems to be a lot of countries that are culturally
| homogenious, and yet they are poor and miserable. So it
| does not seem to check out.
|
| It is also not clear how one should calculate this - for
| example you could have white americans of german dissent
| violently disagreeing in issues of Trump, or hell, this
| about civil war. You could have people of different
| background hold very similar opinions.
| biomcgary wrote:
| My general hypothesis is that most people are happier
| when they feel typical or normal (even when they claim to
| value being different). This seems to be the essence of
| lots of advertising. To increase their own happiness,
| most people want to "normalize" everyone around them
| (levels of wealth, values, etc).
|
| Perhaps national happiness (since that is the level of
| society being discussed) is a joint function of cultural
| AND financial homogeneity? Many poor countries with high
| cultural homogeneity have tremendous financial
| heterogeneity (e.g., wealthy strongmen and their
| lackeys), which leads to unhappiness.
|
| There are more ways that people want to be normal than
| just cultural and financial. For example, I would also
| posit that people with more common personality traits are
| probably happier. However, money and culture seem to
| cover a large fraction of how people perceive normality.
| brianpan wrote:
| Maybe we are measuring happiness incorrectly. Instead of
| most people being happy, what if we made a small number
| of people REALLY happy? Maybe the 0.1% are so happy that
| it balances out the sadness of everyone else?
|
| /sarcasm
| astrange wrote:
| Neither of those seem that important at the country level
| as long as it's true at some level somewhere.
|
| If you're in a small country richer people in the
| neighboring country seem about as likely to have the same
| effect. On the other hand, if you're in a large country
| and they live in a different city you're not running into
| them.
|
| An issue with nationalism is that nations are in some
| ways very real and in some ways fake.
| lmm wrote:
| Aren't they?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| What about extractive wealth that relies on the misery of
| people in other nations, how to factor that into nation
| specific well-being indexes
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is great for a happiness metric. Import happiness and
| export misery.
|
| You improve your position relative to other nations both
| ways!
|
| This is a great example of how focus on metrics can lead
| to a race to the bottom.
|
| Better yet, save money and don't even bother importing
| the happiness. Just sow misery, and your country will
| have better and better stats!
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| why are we speaking about happiness and not about the
| colonisation of the solar system or about finding out
| what truly lies behind our existence? simulation,
| multiverse or what and if so, why?
|
| That said, a good metric obviously mesures power on this
| planet so it must be something like how fast an economy
| can build a space station or advanced military equipment.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| typical nick land accelerationist / EA shill response,
| you could have just said that is your thing and the rest
| of your post would be obvious and left implied
| drdeca wrote:
| That's not really what I associate with EA?
|
| With Nick Land, maybe, yeah, I guess.
|
| Honestly it reminds me most of how some people try to
| spin Bitcoin's power use as a good thing.
|
| The comment does have some similarity to a point which I
| think reasonable, but doesn't quite capture the thing.
|
| Specifically, it questions happiness as a goal. This, I
| think, has something to it, but not quite in the way they
| said. For an individual who is neither unhappy nor
| "feeling nothing", "being happy" is, I think, a
| questionable goal, as I think it puts things backwards.
|
| But, valuing others being happy, is, I think, very often
| a rather good heuristic, as "things that make someone
| happy" are often "things that benefit them" (though not
| always. Non-voluntarily chemically inducing a euphoria in
| someone, doesn't benefit them. ) . Looking at "how happy
| and satisfied are people generally" is a pretty decent
| heuristic for estimating how well things are going for
| people overall, though this heuristic can be goodharted.
|
| Perhaps somewhat better than "how happy are you" would be
| "how well are things going for you? How much do the
| general states of affairs align with your preferences,
| and how is the rate of change of the degree to which the
| general state of affairs aligns with your preferences?
| How's it going?".
|
| This combination of things is, I think, closer to what we
| should ideally want for each-other than "happiness", but,
| "happiness" is still a pretty good approximation in most
| reasonable circumstances.
|
| (It is best to avoid the unreasonable circumstances where
| it ceases to be a good approximation)
| astrange wrote:
| Nations that practiced colonialism didn't actually
| benefit those "nations", more like specific people in the
| nations. It probably made them poorer if anything, though
| people will sacrifice wealth for feeling proud of being
| in a cool empire and getting to drink tea.
|
| The former colonial nations do always show up high in
| every index, but that's correlation because they're in
| Europe. The colonised Finland and Ireland are always in
| there too.
|
| https://www.socialprogress.org/global-index-2022-results
|
| Looking at US states:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/247034/hawaii-tops-
| wellbeing-re...
|
| ...I have no idea what's going on here. Is this native
| marketing for Wyoming?
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Funnily enough
|
| This is not the gotcha you think it is.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Which of these countries you're referring to doesn't support a
| highly extractive (no matter the cost as long as there's
| sufficient profit in it), "greed is good" version of
| capitalism? If you're referring to the Nordic countries, from a
| Marxist perspective, they exploit workers plenty, just mostly
| not _their_ workers. Lenin talks about this practice in
| _Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism_ wherein
| capitalist countries have an incentive to make conditions at
| home _just_ good enough to stave off revolution, but not so
| good as to overly damage profit margins. They do so by
| essentially exporting misery to other countries the way the US
| has basically turned China into a large US manufacturing annex.
| The global south is highly exploited by capitalist nations.
| Norway in particular struggles with huge issues related to
| climate change, being something like the 13th largest oil
| producer in the world.
|
| TL;DR: are any of these countries you're referring to _not_
| capitalist countries that just export misery?
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| Because happiness indexes are unscientific nonsense that give
| higher scores for things like income equality
| nradov wrote:
| Happiness indexes are rather meaningless and arbitrary, often
| reflecting more the political biases of the index creators
| rather than things that regular people care about. Instead of
| making indexes it's better to look at revealed preferences in
| terms of voluntary migration rate. The USA has a positive net
| migration rate with all major European countries despite having
| lower index scores.
| moomin wrote:
| I'd like to see how well it correlates with median income.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > (e.g. increasing a countries spending and decreasing tax)
|
| That one's hardly far into the future, more like the next
| election cycle.
|
| Policies that improve well being today and screw us in the far
| future would be more like resource depletion, pollution,
| ecological destruction.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not all that's to the Future are negative expected value. The
| difficulty and nuances figuring out which are and which are
| not
| harlequinn77 wrote:
| xnx wrote:
| Without reading the page, I'm going to assume I'm better off
| reading linked topics from Wikipedia like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Well-being
| JamesBarney wrote:
| 4 sections on how it's tricky to measure economic productivity.
|
| One tiny section on how easy it would be to run an economy wide
| correlational well being study with product use, whole ignoring
| the multitude of problems with that. The biggest one being
| correlational data is mostly trash.
| rr888 wrote:
| The happiest people I've seeen are the ones with the biggest
| families. Lots of siblings, cousins, aunties & uncles and of
| course grand children. Perhaps this is the best measure for how
| successful a country is.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I suspect one of the main things you'd figure out is that wealthy
| people are inefficiently turning their wealth into well being. I
| know some people with generational wealth who don't seem to be
| significantly more happy than your average Joe. OTOH there's also
| going to be a lot of poor people that we can justify in not
| helping as they are already happier than you'd think from a
| consumption point of view. Indeed people I know at the bottom of
| the income scale don't seem to be any different in terms of
| perceived well being.
|
| There's been some research I've heard of in the area about people
| who won the lottery or have some life altering accident, somehow
| nothing changes how happy they are in the long run. Wonder if the
| evidence still supports that.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > Wonder if the evidence still supports that
|
| It doesn't. Bereavement, disability, unemployment all make
| people less happy over the long term
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235657/
| fleddr wrote:
| It makes sense that when you take consumption into overdrive,
| you don't gain much happiness. You can pay a 1000$ for a meal,
| but it won't taste a 100 times better than my 10$ meal.
|
| You can build a house with 20 bedrooms but you can still only
| sleep in one, and you've just created a new problem to manage:
| cleaning all of them.
|
| You can buy a 1$ million car but it's not a 100 times more
| comfortable or faster, nor does it do anything in a traffic
| jam. It'll bore you after 2 weeks as it becomes the new normal.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Just to be clear, we need to measure inflation, and therefore, by
| accident, we end up measuring productivity. Here is a simplified
| example:
|
| The nominal money GDP increases by 6%
|
| Population increases by 1.5%
|
| That leaves 4.5% that is either inflation or productivity. If we
| determine that inflation was 3% then we know that productivity
| grew by 1.5%. We don't necessarily aim to measure productivity (I
| mean, we do, but even if we did not) we would still end up with a
| productivity number, once we had subtracted out population growth
| and inflation.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Great article, lots of food for thought. The only thing that
| seems to be left out is _agricultural_ productivity, which is
| fairly closely related to _ecological_ productivity.
|
| Economics would be a more reliable field if it incorporated the
| work of people like the founder of ecological studies, G. Evelyn
| Hutchinson:
|
| https://yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/4200-the-founder-of-...
|
| This becomes even more relevant as the global human population
| starts running up against basic resource constraints in many
| places.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| isn't it an inverse relationship? To make an acre of land
| arable you have to destroy an acre of "virgin" ecology?
| m0llusk wrote:
| Measuring possible benefits seems like a good idea. Well being
| turns out to be complex with multiple factors. For example,
| happiness itself is rather shallow. Satisfaction is related but
| less fickle and may be more closely related to what people think
| of as well being. Having a bunch of such related metrics would
| allow comparison that could lead to optimization or risk
| reduction.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| This site would not be the same without a daily dose of
| uninformed commentary on economics! In this case from a guy who
| (with a straight face?!?) says "...as The Singularity approaches"
| ! Wow.
|
| Productivity measurement is hard. The author points to many of
| the difficulties. We (economists) have been aware of many of
| these difficulties since the 1930's or earlier.
|
| No one in this literature thinks "hedonic adjustments get it
| exactly right!" to take just one example. Instead they think more
| along the lines of: this is the best solution we can come up with
| to this very hard problem.
|
| For an informed, recent survey of the difficulties and the
| importance of getting these questions right, try Syversen and De
| Loecker's survey "an industrial organization perspective on
| productivity" from the recent Handbook of Industrial
| Organization, available for free via the NBER working paper
| series.
|
| Why might you care? Here is one fact from that survey: within a
| _narrowly defined_ industry category, the difference in measured
| output from the 5th to the 95th percentiles of the productivity
| distribution can be a factor of 2! To emphasize: two firms with
| _the same_ measured inputs, but one produces _twice as much_
| output than the other. This is visible across many industry
| categories. It's a fascinating problem and well worthy of study.
|
| The original author should probably also read "the sad truth
| about happiness scales" from the Journal of Political Economy in
| 2019. Such scales are unidentified in quite a fundamental way and
| the results they give are essentially meaningless.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| The problem I have with economists is that they pour their
| effort into what is trackable after waving away the softer
| stuff.
|
| What does it rhyme with?
|
| - Companies that pour their effort into fine tuning their
| websites and adverts based off of what their analytics tells
| them. Years later their product dies and nobody really says
| why. [Narrator: All the best designers and developers left as
| the product and company slowly turned soulless.]
|
| - City planners that make deals with builders for suburban
| housing which increases the tax base. Decades later they're
| stuck dealing with the outsized infrastructure maintenance
| costs for things like sewer lines without the proper density to
| afford them.
|
| - Prisons, schools, and hospitals get mandates from the state
| to include a fruit with every breakfast. Individually packaged
| jam fits the poorly written bill, so that's what we all get.
|
| And on and on.
|
| The point is, there are things we need to do and problems we
| need to address that are frustratingly hard to define and agree
| upon, but the answer is not to wave them away. The answer is
| the opposite. To head right into them and try to really make a
| difference without getting lazy.
|
| I could, easily, in an afternoon mention dozens of quantifiable
| proxies for different aspects of a good life. I'm very sure
| that countries with the technical prowess of Apple and Tesla
| are capable of achieving better instruments of our collective
| wellbeing.
|
| What we need are economists with courage and resolve. There is
| obviously something horrible going on across the world right
| now even if GDP keeps growing.
| ladyattis wrote:
| Also, I wish the author would read any of the work by Mumford
| regarding technics. Or Ivan Illich wrt the over adoption of
| specific technologies. Many of the issues I think affecting
| firms wrt productivity declines vs the lack of well being of
| employees is something we can probably measure reliably, it's
| probably more that firms and their shareholders don't really
| care that their employees are basically burning out faster than
| their demands on ROI and productivity.
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _Why might you care? Here is one fact from that survey:
| within a narrowly defined industry category, the difference in
| measured output from the 5th to the 95th percentiles of the
| productivity distribution can be a factor of 2! To emphasize:
| two firms with the same measured inputs, but one produces twice
| as much output than the other. This is visible across many
| industry categories. It's a fascinating problem and well worthy
| of study._
|
| Having seen inside a few organizations of various types, I am
| shocked that the difference is so small.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| I bet computing 1st to 99th %-ile would be even worse. Also I
| believe the result they cite is on average. I bet the
| extremes of the 5-95 comparison can get crazy.
|
| Find the "right" industry and I bet you can make it really
| horrible.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _I bet computing 1st to 99th %-ile would be even worse_
|
| that's just a property of the normal distribution: if you
| know the difference between 5 and 95, you know the rest of
| the curve.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| You are misunderstanding something. The comparison they
| are reporting is a comparison between the 5th and 95th
| percentiles of the _empirical distribution_ of measured
| productivities. The normal distribution has nothing to do
| with this.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > The original author should probably also read "the sad truth
| about happiness scales" from the Journal of Political Economy
| in 2019. Such scales are unidentified in quite a fundamental
| way and the results they give are essentially meaningless.
|
| Yeah. If we're failing at measuring productivity, are we going
| to succeed at accurately measuring well-being? Not likely.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Perhaps, accepting the imperfections it is better to try to
| optimise for happiness, even if the optimisation can only be
| judged as to whether they're generally heading in the right
| direction ... perhaps if imperfect measures of happiness are
| improving then life improves for the many in a way that
| doesn't improve by measures which reflect mainly financial
| aspects of society.
|
| You can make a rich person 100 times richer and overall
| prosperity is probably decreasing. But you can't really make
| someone 100x happier (especial if there already relatively
| happy), all that money maybe made the rich person 1.0001x
| happier (or even <1x). Seems like given this sort of
| difference in happiness and financial wealth measuring the
| latter has a built in aspect of relative equality. For those
| who care about creating societies that benefit the whole
| population, this is an enticing possibility.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Better to _optimize_ for happiness? Sure, I can go there.
|
| But the title emphasizes _measuring_ happiness, while
| pointing out that our measurement of productivity is
| flawed. But measuring happiness /well-being is going to be
| far more flawed.
|
| The case for optimizing for happiness and well-being does
| not depend on our being able to measure it more accurately.
| janef0421 wrote:
| Using any sort of aggregate metric is probably a bad idea, as
| you're losing too much information to generate useful results.
| It's a better idea to identify particular deficiencies in
| economic production, such as poor appliance lifespan or lack of
| suitable housing, and assign specialised teams to address those
| deficiencies, with a central committee coordinating between those
| teams.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| WRT "AI for Wellbeing," what research is taking place today?
| angusturner wrote:
| Only tangentially related, but there is some cool work on using
| reinforcement learning to learn an optimal tax rate. See: "AI
| Economist".
| dalbasal wrote:
| Idk...
|
| We have a tendency to use indicators irresponsibly. Economic
| productivity measures can be useful for understanding specific
| circumstances, like the output of an industrial sector. The
| broader and more abstract we extend them, the more unmoored it's
| meaning.
|
| This is also true if we'll being measures, probably.
| lisper wrote:
| > So -- suppose we give this sort of combined well-being survey
| to a random sample of people, and also measure what products and
| services they've used and purchased. From this dataset, we could
| make reasonable statistical inferences about the amount of well-
| being increase or decrease associated with a certain product or
| service among a certain class of people.
|
| Unfortunately, no, you can't. There are lots and lots of
| problems. Just a few off the top of my head:
|
| 1. The effects of products are not uniform across the population.
| Alcohol, for example, catalyzes well-being for some people, but
| for others it has a dramatic negative effect.
|
| 2. The effects of consumption on well-being change with the time
| horizon over which you measure them. Eating ice cream might
| improve my subjective well-being today, but harm it tomorrow when
| it has a deleterious effect on my health.
|
| 3. Externalities. Owning a private jet might improve _my_
| subjective well-being, but harm everyone else 's with its noise
| and emissions.
|
| Measuring economic output is actually a not-entirely-unreasonable
| proxy for measuring well-being because in a free market people
| presumably make rational choices and spend their money in a way
| that maximizes their well-being. The problem is not that the
| proxy is wrong, the problem is that people turn out not to be
| very good at making these choices. It's not entirely their fault.
| A big part of the problem is information asymmetry: producers
| know a lot more about the potential negative outcomes of their
| products than consumers do.
|
| I think a much better way to tackle this problem is with
| education and stronger consumer disclosure laws rather than
| trying to change the metric to something as poorly defined as
| "well-being catalysis".
| kmacdough wrote:
| Whether or not well-being is as easy to measur, your
| assumptions about free-market as a stand-in for well-being does
| not have a solid foundation.
|
| > in a free market people presumably make rational choices and
| spend their money in a way that maximizes their well-being.
|
| There is no particular reason to presume this is true, and many
| reasons to presume it is not.
|
| Psychology is littered with well-demonstrated examples of
| humans acting against self-interest. 1) People are consistently
| willing to incur personal cost for the benefit of a perceived
| community, and are even willing to incur personal cost to
| punish those working against it. Community recognition is not
| required to observe this behavior. 2) People are quite
| susceptible to marketing. The history of the American tobacco
| industry is a great example.
|
| The assumption that self-interested rational entities leads to
| a healthy or productive society has been similarly discredited.
| The Honduran Free Trade zones and Eddie Lampert's catastrophic
| reorganization of Sears are great counterexamples.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Fair enough. But I think most people are skeptical the
| government is in a better position to determine what makes
| them happiest. Government edicts/propaganda may, in fact, do
| the opposite merely by virtue of being edicts/propaganda.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps we should take a good look at countries where
| people are happiest, and at how their governments are run.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| only applies when countries have similar demographics.
| e.g. most countries are a magnitude smaller than the
| US(except for China, India). Most countries have a much
| more homogeneous population(e.g. China, India). Best
| comparison I can think of is EU vs US, and if you can
| show that Europeans are happier, then that calls for a
| very limited central government that is not elected, and
| states can model themselves after European countries.
| Scale and demographics are important.
| amelius wrote:
| Sounds like you are a supporter of limited government
| involvement.
| lisper wrote:
| > Psychology is littered with well-demonstrated examples of
| humans acting against self-interest.
|
| That is often claimed, but it is far from clear that it is
| actually true. The problem is that in order to make this
| assessment at all, _someone_ has to decide what a person 's
| self-interest actually _is_. There is no universal objective
| measure of self-interest because different people want
| different things (this is the reason trade works at all).
|
| > People are consistently willing to incur personal cost for
| the benefit of a perceived community, and are even willing to
| incur personal cost to punish those working against it.
| Community recognition is not required to observe this
| behavior.
|
| Sure. But how is this working against self-interest? I for
| one _like_ being part of a strong, cohesive community. But I
| also recognize that building community requires effort, and
| that effort incurs a cost. So who are you to say that the
| cost I personally bear to shoulder my share of that burden is
| "acting against my self-interest"?
|
| > People are quite susceptible to marketing
|
| One man's marketing is another man's education.
|
| > The history of the American tobacco industry is a great
| example.
|
| Sure, but that was, in retrospect, an example of the tobacco
| industry just flat-out lying to people. If you want to argue
| that society benefits from having some mechanism to
| discourage willful deception I certainly won't argue with
| that.
|
| But even a case as clear-cut as tobacco still has grey areas.
| People still smoke despite the fact that the risks are now
| well known. If someone _knows_ the risks and still chooses to
| take them on because they 'd rather have a nicotine buzz than
| a long buzz-free life, who are you and I to tell them that
| they are wrong? Because once you take that step it's a very
| slippery slope from there to not allowing anyone to take any
| risks at all.
| tuatoru wrote:
| The idea of measuring well-being comes at least in part from the
| work of the economist Amartya Sen, whose most famous work is his
| book _Development As Freedom_.
|
| Sen's work, in turn, has its philosophical ground in the work of
| Martha Nussbaum on "capability based ethics".
|
| The capabilities approach, by keeping things local, tries to
| avoid requiring that different cultures all have the same values
| as tends to happen with utilitarian approaches and materialism.
|
| 1. https://daily-philosophy.com/martha-nussbaum-and-the-
| capabil...
| jph wrote:
| Upvote because Martha Nussbaum is IMHO the #1 living
| philosopher working toward real-world real-life improvements
| for billions of people. Her work on capability ethics helps
| guide entire countries in their policies, and helps guide the
| United Nations as well.
|
| Here is her list of the ten most-important capabilities and a
| brief description of each:
|
| https://daily-philosophy.com/martha-nussbaum-and-the-capabil...
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Why do people always leave out the time preference in these
| analyses? It is soo important, especially in countries with non
| uniform (age-wise) demographies. It's easy to completely discount
| the future and and spend all you're resources to be happy short
| term
| inawarminister wrote:
| Ah, but economics as a science do care about Utility. That is,
| well-being and happiness of a person, as an agent in the economy.
|
| The main issue is how to measure it properly?
| andrewmutz wrote:
| We do measure well-being and happiness, and the statistics are
| very interesting:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction
|
| Some highlights:
|
| -National income and national happiness are different, but are
| positively correlated
|
| -Average levels of happiness have been rising internationally for
| decades, with the notable exception of the united states
|
| -While economic inequality has been rising in countries like the
| US, _happiness_ inequality has been falling. From a happiness
| perspective, our lives are less unequal than they were decades
| ago.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The most interesting Insight from the US data is that happiness
| is very poorly tied to how much people actually have, and more
| tied to perceptions of where they stand relative to others.
|
| It is like the classic experiment of a monkey being outraged
| when given less treats than another monkey, despite having more
| treats than they otherwise would have.
|
| It is all tied to expectations
| criddell wrote:
| I think it's also tied to the innate sense of fairness we
| seem to have.
|
| For example, if everybody where you work gets a 20% year end
| bonus and you get a 5% bonus you would probably be unhappy
| even though you got a bonus.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I basically agree.
|
| I think it is tied to the expectation of fairness and the
| perception of fairness.
|
| If you expect to get the same bonus, and you perceive you
| were slighted, you will probably be unhappy.
|
| Perspective plays a huge part.
|
| That's not to say people don't have valid grievances, but
| there is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance, and large
| gaps between expectations and reality.
|
| Take the parent example of US inequality. Low earners are
| unhappy that they make so much less than US high earners.
| Well that's unfair! However, they certainly don't gain much
| comfort by being a high earner globally. That's not unfair,
| that is deserved!
| hbrn wrote:
| As your example perfectly illustrates, our perception of
| fairness is extremely biased, and therefore is not a good
| metric.
|
| "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to
| someone else today"
| lazide wrote:
| You know, it's getting to the point where any spiel, headline,
| whatever with 'should' in it I'll automatically ignore, as it's
| almost always impractical for a number of reasons which they
| always gloss over.
|
| 'We get X if we measure Y with Z side-effects' however? I can
| only get so excited.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| The biggest miss is the majority of people would be a lot
| happier if they didn't have to work to be able to do the things
| they enjoy but could just do the things they enjoy.
|
| The disutility of labor or somesuch thing.
| vadertemp wrote:
| The Human Development Index is another measure that was developed
| as a result of similar reasoning back in the 90's, specially
| accounting for such development in the third world.
| filbo wrote:
| WRT Human well being, what research is being undertaken today?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Vast amounts of knowledge are continually generated about what
| leads to human well being, both scientifically and culturally.
|
| The real challenge IMHO, is that most people don't like the
| answers or want to make improvements.
| filbo wrote:
| The conglomerate of Tinder Match Bumble etc is producing vast
| amount of data on Human desires. We should mine that.
| RockingGoodNite wrote:
| The opposite sex. Done.
| filbo wrote:
| Don't forget the pets.
| Bakary wrote:
| What are some examples of answers that the public does not
| like?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is hard to buy happiness.
|
| Building and maintaining social connections is very
| important.
|
| Exercise and healthy diet are very important.
|
| Personally helping others is very rewarding.
|
| Comparing yourself to others is very detrimental.
|
| Fixating on things and people you dislike is very
| detrimental.
|
| Most of these are things that people are told as a child
| and struggle to do. Most of them you can't buy, outsource,
| or regulate.
|
| My personal axe I like grinding is TV. The average American
| watches 20+ hours of TV a week. On average, I don't think
| it helps their long term happiness and I don't think it is
| restful.
|
| I think most people would be happier if they literally
| stared at a wall or slept instead, let alone if they did
| some of the things I listed above.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I wouldn't say that "Measuring Economic Productivity Is Pretty
| Much Bullshit" as the author says. Measuring economic
| productivity is fine, as long as that isn't your end-all, be-all.
| I certainly think that how we measure GDP should be radically
| changed and economic productivity should be a SMALL piece of GDP,
| but not the entire damn thing.
| [deleted]
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| It seems fundamental to the human condition that working on
| something (whether mastering the creation of artistic work,
| building businesses, becoming an amazing teacher, literally any
| productive use of time) is what drives true happiness. Once a
| society largely moves beyond Maslow's hierarchy, the ability to
| productively work on something of your choosing, whether as your
| main job or as a hobby/side gig is what brings passion and
| meaning to life.
|
| Being paid in some way for this work is one way for people to
| support the creator/teacher/builder. This will add to economic
| activity and continue to grow the economic pie.
|
| No one looks back on their life and wishes they spent more time
| laying on the couch.
|
| So while economic productivity/growth is a crude measure for
| sure, it might be the best one we've found so far.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| > No one looks back on their life and wishes they spent more
| time laying on the couch.
|
| Clearly true. Now, how many people look back on their life and
| wish they had spent more time building their business rather
| than spending time with family, friends, etc?
|
| Even more fundamental to the human condition is our social
| nature. Living a life that prioritizes that is what drives true
| happiness.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Now, how many people look back on their life and wish they
| had spent more time building their business rather than
| spending time with family, friends, etc?
|
| I do. Most of the "social time" has been wasted: some
| projects I did each bring me more lasting happiness that even
| all the time spent with family and friends put together.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I wouldn't expect the number to be zero, but I expect it's
| a small percentage. I also expect the number to decrease
| with age.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > No one looks back on their life and wishes they spent more
| time laying on the couch.
|
| This is one of the most insightful comments I've read for a
| while, and this one liner perfectly summarize your reply.
| Gormo wrote:
| I'm not sure it's ever appropriate to speculate on what
| elements of life drive happiness for other people.
|
| Everything everyone does is by definition in pursuit of
| satisfying some internal motivation, and it doesn't seem
| reasonable to me to second-guess other people's choices for the
| purpose of optimizing their happiness against external criteria
| -- only for the purpose of preventing externalities that harm
| our own pursuit of happiness.
|
| Attempting to create macro-scale metrics that attempt to
| approximate the optimality of of individuals' subjective
| experience, rather than measuring objective consequences of
| their manifest behavior -- like their actual economic activity
| -- seems both too abstract to be useful and too susceptible to
| manipulation by those with ulterior motives.
|
| So I agree that economic productivity is the best measure, but
| for quite different reasons.
| chatterhead wrote:
| The biggest reason it's difficult to measure productivity is
| because the corporate incentive structure is not based around
| producing profit; it's based around generating gross revenue to
| justify over-inflated WS estimates of value so C-suit executives
| can sell their quarterly share distributions at higher prices
| than the quarter before.
|
| That's fucking it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People don't want to be happy or well. They want to hoard wealth
| and hate their fellow man. This is the sad truth that western
| democratic capitalism reveals :(
| president wrote:
| This assumes a utopia where all humans are friendly and all
| countries are at peace. Well-being is great but economic and
| capital is what gives you power and security. It gives you
| technology, defense, and weapons. In other words, when your
| economic power declines, it gives hostile foreign nations with
| more money (power) to dominate or invade you.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It's not at all at country scale though. Who in Russia wants to
| attack Ukraine and isn't an oligarch seeking to exploit the
| people living there (or mentally ill)?
| nottorp wrote:
| Another subscribe popup with no close...
| hbrn wrote:
| GDP is the worst form of measurement, except for all others.
| fulafel wrote:
| The premise is that we don't do measures of well-being but there
| doesn't seem to be anything to back this up in the article? There
| are well known measures like the HDI, various life satisfaction
| components in gallups, OECD better life index etc.
|
| It seems to me a better policy argument would be emphasize these
| over productivity, or maybe propose to improve the measures in
| some way if warranted.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The point is not that these measures give us a perfect way to
| measure human well-being, but rather that they give us a decent
| stab at it, which is definitely worth taking.
|
| The old motte-and-bailey tactic, nice!
|
| If he thinks productivity metrics are "voodoo", wait til he
| learns more about those measurements of happiness and well-being.
| It hurts that we don't have a good way to measure well-being
| rigorously and consistently, but _given that we do not_ it seems
| like step one should be to get to the point where we can do that,
| and only then should we consider whether we should replace
| existing measurements and paradigms with it.
| theptip wrote:
| I think I agree with the central premise, that labor productivity
| is (and is increasingly) a wacky metric.
|
| I'm not sure GDP is as wacky right now, e.g.
| https://omnibudsman.substack.com/p/all-poverty-is-energy-pov...
|
| I do strongly agree that we should be clear that we care about
| GDP because it lets us buy more quality of life (in many cases,
| literally more life), and if GDP diverged from providing that we
| should stop caring about GDP
|
| I'm not sure I buy that the right metric is hedonic well-being
| though; the issues with Mills' Hedonic Utilitarianism are well-
| known, and I don't want to prescribe heroin or wireheading for
| everyone to maximize their subjective happiness. I think some
| metric of Eudaimonic Utility is probably more what we want.
|
| What are the factors of human flourishing? How do we measure and
| improve those? Things like health, education (in the broadest
| sense including trades/crafts), economic security/opportunity,
| physical safety, community, etc.
|
| One can easily imagine higher-GDP configurations that trample
| most of the populace on the above, and we should not choose those
| merely because "growth is good".
| fleddr wrote:
| Think of the economy as a machine that needs to keep going. It
| doesn't really care about what keeps it going for as long as it
| keeps going. In fact, it doesn't even care about the production
| of value either.
|
| You'll see this in consumption culture, specifically of non-
| essentials. Consumption for the sake of consumption, fueled by
| non-stop marketing. Going into a mall and buying lots of useless
| shit. Or the online version of it.
|
| You'll also see it in work culture. It is of absolute vital
| importance that you have a job, but absolutely nobody cares about
| whether its adds value.
|
| The only requirement is that money changes hands, irrespective of
| "value" or "well-being". Somebody once said that roughly 50% of
| our economy is effectively just keeping each other busy.
|
| Isn't it highly suspicious how decades of improvements in
| economic productivity have always converted to "more stuff" but
| not once have improved work conditions? Say, shorter work
| days/weeks? That would do a lot for "well-being" but is obviously
| not the point of our economy.
|
| There isn't really a point other than to keep it going. If
| there's no point, no metric makes sense.
| nickpp wrote:
| Go ahead. Then let us know when a neighbor with an actual economy
| and army invades your country.
|
| The last 3 years have thought us that you can't live in a dream
| world. There is a reality and it will bite you in the a**.
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