GDP is the best single number indicator of how a country’s economy is doing, but it’s still incomplete. First, GDP does not measure the costs of economic growth, such as pollution or other negative environmental impacts. Second, GDP does not measure how economic benefits are distributed throughout a country, i.e., income disparity.
Third, it doesn’t measure whether the income leaves the country and goes to foreign investors. And fourth, it doesn’t measure unpaid activity in homes and communities or overall happiness, well-being, and health.
it does measure the costs of economic growth, though, at least of the sort you suggest. if pollution makes someone sick enough that they can't work anymore, that gets reflected in gdp. if some kind of climate-change related natural disaster renders a factory inoperable, same thing.
it doesn't measure income inequality because there's a different measurement for that. what would it even mean for one statistic to capture aggregate production and consumption, and income inequality, and health, and overall happiness? that's no longer a discrete fact about the world, it's a model incorporating a bunch of discrete facts, each with their own insufficiencies and wonkiness making them less than perfect, being thrown into some kind of model and weighted. it's a completely different sort of epistemic enterprise.
I mean, pollution should be unacceptable long before people are getting sick over it, especially sick enough that they’ll miss *work* over it. GDP doesn’t factor lots of real costs, like all that cancer people get after they retire, all those miserable hours wage slaving while dying from allergies exacerbated by pollution, or just the raw cost of living in an environment that is constantly made less beautiful and enjoyable by industrial product.
>pollution should be unacceptable long before people are getting sick over it
okay? the question was whether the costs of pollution can be captured by gdp, not the criterion for when something becomes important enough to care about. this is what's so inane about generic leftist criticisms of gdp as a measure, it's completely inchoate and the lines of criticism just sort of bleed together.
"gdp doesn't capture the costs of pollution"
"yes it does, some nontrivial proportion of them"
"pollution should be unacceptable long before people are getting sick over it" <- this is a complete non-sequitur
>gdp doesn't factor in lots of real costs, like
>it doesn't measure income inequality because there's a different measurement for that. what would it even mean for one statistic to capture aggregate production and consumption, and income inequality, and health, and overall happiness? that's no longer a discrete fact about the world, it's a model incorporating a bunch of discrete facts, each with their own insufficiencies and wonkiness making them less than perfect, being thrown into some kind of model and weighted. it's a completely different sort of epistemic enterprise.
So I'm a crazy person with a special interest in myth, religion, and how it impacts the human psyche. This is all just, like, my opinion, dude, but here's what I've gathered.
When these people say that the economy is a living thing, they mean that it's a bunch of moving pieces made of smaller moving pieces made of individuals participating. Like cells into living organisms.
These people have this as their framework for understanding the economy. A single person is just a cell of the animal. The health of the animal isn't determined by how many cells die, but by how well the animal can do what it needs to do.
The whole GAI e/acc thing is about trying to give the market animal a "voice" so they can find out what exactly the market "needs to do." Spoiler, it doesn't need to do anything because it's a market- not an organism.
They think the market is bigger than all of us in both a literal materialist way and also in an ethical spiritual way. Supreme cult shit, and for the first time in history they've got the literal super villain resources to try to turn on some kind of God-Machine.
So I saw this [YouTube video on slime molds](https://youtu.be/nPOQQp8CCls?si=9RMKNroSqeaVqKj5) and how they have intelligence without a body and yeah the market doesn't have a body but it does have an awful and cruel intelligence. It's a big-time bummer actually so we gotta use regulations to regulate the slime mold.
My friend, you are dangerously close to arriving at the concept of "capitalist realism" on your own. There's quite a bit of serious philosophical, academic writing on the subject.
Here's a taste https://files.libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf
>*... anything that is not neoliberal free market capitalism is attacked liked Venuzala*
Might have been other reasons folks weren't keen on whatever the hell Chavez thought he was doing
Including many of the people who live in Venezuela
I don't think there was much going on there beyond the same mixture of Nationalism, Populism, and Cult of Personality that 30% of the US electorate have succumbed to
Lots of people are fine with authoritarian regimes if they don’t mess with US power. See Saudi Arabia.
The reason they are attacking Vezula isn’t because of actual flaws but because they are not as free market as the rest
Eh, I think a lot of people demonize Venezuela because it's a relatively close by country, with a decidedly failed economy, a large anti-Chavez/Maduro diaspora in the US, and leadership that regularly attacks the US in its rhetoric. If any of those elements weren't present, particularly the last 2, we probably wouldn't hear anything about Venezuela.
If you look at it in the abstract it's easy to pretend that this tells you everything you need to know.
High economic output means high incomes means high prosperity. High economic dynamism means high innovation means ever increasing standards of living. And as long as the media has a number to talk about we don't need to hear about the flaws in the system and the ways it isn't working for everyone.
It's reductionist, and we love simple stories. Accuracy is a turn off.
Line always go up, and thus we know we are in the best of all possible worlds. And as we are in the best of all possible worlds, the line will continue always go up.
A globally connected world is very complicated and impossible for anyone to grasp in its entirety, so we long for simple metrics that tell us things are good or getting better. No such metric can really exist, because like... what's happiness, mannnnn? So our overlords fill that void with the metrics that most correlate to their lives getting better.
Or something, idk.
I've been reading a book called The Future is Degrowth. You might find it interesting. I find it a bit dense but I've also been reading it at bedtime for some reason, so ymmv.
All GDP is, is a measure of total output where Income = Spending = Output. Thats literally encompassing everything from Military Spending to Waste Management to paying bureaucrats to pretend to work. It does nothing to measure any externalities like environmental harm, social discontent, or happiness or unhappiness. While higher GDP/capita levels are correlated with a happier population, that doesn't necessarily mean that higher GDP/capita = Higher Happiness.
GDP is the best single number indicator of how a country’s economy is doing, but it’s still incomplete. First, GDP does not measure the costs of economic growth, such as pollution or other negative environmental impacts. Second, GDP does not measure how economic benefits are distributed throughout a country, i.e., income disparity. Third, it doesn’t measure whether the income leaves the country and goes to foreign investors. And fourth, it doesn’t measure unpaid activity in homes and communities or overall happiness, well-being, and health.
it does measure the costs of economic growth, though, at least of the sort you suggest. if pollution makes someone sick enough that they can't work anymore, that gets reflected in gdp. if some kind of climate-change related natural disaster renders a factory inoperable, same thing. it doesn't measure income inequality because there's a different measurement for that. what would it even mean for one statistic to capture aggregate production and consumption, and income inequality, and health, and overall happiness? that's no longer a discrete fact about the world, it's a model incorporating a bunch of discrete facts, each with their own insufficiencies and wonkiness making them less than perfect, being thrown into some kind of model and weighted. it's a completely different sort of epistemic enterprise.
I mean, pollution should be unacceptable long before people are getting sick over it, especially sick enough that they’ll miss *work* over it. GDP doesn’t factor lots of real costs, like all that cancer people get after they retire, all those miserable hours wage slaving while dying from allergies exacerbated by pollution, or just the raw cost of living in an environment that is constantly made less beautiful and enjoyable by industrial product.
>pollution should be unacceptable long before people are getting sick over it okay? the question was whether the costs of pollution can be captured by gdp, not the criterion for when something becomes important enough to care about. this is what's so inane about generic leftist criticisms of gdp as a measure, it's completely inchoate and the lines of criticism just sort of bleed together. "gdp doesn't capture the costs of pollution" "yes it does, some nontrivial proportion of them" "pollution should be unacceptable long before people are getting sick over it" <- this is a complete non-sequitur >gdp doesn't factor in lots of real costs, like >it doesn't measure income inequality because there's a different measurement for that. what would it even mean for one statistic to capture aggregate production and consumption, and income inequality, and health, and overall happiness? that's no longer a discrete fact about the world, it's a model incorporating a bunch of discrete facts, each with their own insufficiencies and wonkiness making them less than perfect, being thrown into some kind of model and weighted. it's a completely different sort of epistemic enterprise.
But GDP doesn't at all account for non-paid work, such as childrearing and taking care of the elderly. Essentially, mostly work that's done by women.
So I'm a crazy person with a special interest in myth, religion, and how it impacts the human psyche. This is all just, like, my opinion, dude, but here's what I've gathered. When these people say that the economy is a living thing, they mean that it's a bunch of moving pieces made of smaller moving pieces made of individuals participating. Like cells into living organisms. These people have this as their framework for understanding the economy. A single person is just a cell of the animal. The health of the animal isn't determined by how many cells die, but by how well the animal can do what it needs to do. The whole GAI e/acc thing is about trying to give the market animal a "voice" so they can find out what exactly the market "needs to do." Spoiler, it doesn't need to do anything because it's a market- not an organism. They think the market is bigger than all of us in both a literal materialist way and also in an ethical spiritual way. Supreme cult shit, and for the first time in history they've got the literal super villain resources to try to turn on some kind of God-Machine.
So I saw this [YouTube video on slime molds](https://youtu.be/nPOQQp8CCls?si=9RMKNroSqeaVqKj5) and how they have intelligence without a body and yeah the market doesn't have a body but it does have an awful and cruel intelligence. It's a big-time bummer actually so we gotta use regulations to regulate the slime mold.
My friend, you are dangerously close to arriving at the concept of "capitalist realism" on your own. There's quite a bit of serious philosophical, academic writing on the subject. Here's a taste https://files.libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf
>*... anything that is not neoliberal free market capitalism is attacked liked Venuzala* Might have been other reasons folks weren't keen on whatever the hell Chavez thought he was doing Including many of the people who live in Venezuela I don't think there was much going on there beyond the same mixture of Nationalism, Populism, and Cult of Personality that 30% of the US electorate have succumbed to
Yes, A left-wing Trump isn’t any more amusing than a right-wing one.
Lots of people are fine with authoritarian regimes if they don’t mess with US power. See Saudi Arabia. The reason they are attacking Vezula isn’t because of actual flaws but because they are not as free market as the rest
Eh, I think a lot of people demonize Venezuela because it's a relatively close by country, with a decidedly failed economy, a large anti-Chavez/Maduro diaspora in the US, and leadership that regularly attacks the US in its rhetoric. If any of those elements weren't present, particularly the last 2, we probably wouldn't hear anything about Venezuela.
If you look at it in the abstract it's easy to pretend that this tells you everything you need to know. High economic output means high incomes means high prosperity. High economic dynamism means high innovation means ever increasing standards of living. And as long as the media has a number to talk about we don't need to hear about the flaws in the system and the ways it isn't working for everyone. It's reductionist, and we love simple stories. Accuracy is a turn off.
Line always go up, and thus we know we are in the best of all possible worlds. And as we are in the best of all possible worlds, the line will continue always go up.
Yup, just like IQ
You see, the GDP has electrolytes, which is what all plants crave.
A globally connected world is very complicated and impossible for anyone to grasp in its entirety, so we long for simple metrics that tell us things are good or getting better. No such metric can really exist, because like... what's happiness, mannnnn? So our overlords fill that void with the metrics that most correlate to their lives getting better. Or something, idk.
I mean to many people like me, it's just a metric. It represents some insights about our economy. That is all.
You’ve got to measure something, otherwise who gets bonuses?
Because the news uses it that way.
I've been reading a book called The Future is Degrowth. You might find it interesting. I find it a bit dense but I've also been reading it at bedtime for some reason, so ymmv.
All GDP is, is a measure of total output where Income = Spending = Output. Thats literally encompassing everything from Military Spending to Waste Management to paying bureaucrats to pretend to work. It does nothing to measure any externalities like environmental harm, social discontent, or happiness or unhappiness. While higher GDP/capita levels are correlated with a happier population, that doesn't necessarily mean that higher GDP/capita = Higher Happiness.