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Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

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Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#351

Post by lmm »

refurb wrote: post #317
lmm wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in aggregate, there's a great deal of slippage between the two things. Making a small number of cars for very rich people might attract more revenue than making a large number of cars for regular people, even if the latter would be more useful overall. Manipulative advertising and predatory salespeople might mean you can sell cars for more even if those cars are less useful. A car that pollutes less, or is less…

I’m not sure how making a small number of cars for the ultra rich is “slippage” it sounds like value for specific buyers. You may not like people spending money on it, but you’re not the buyer. And I don’t buy the predatory advertising idea. People aren’t as stupid as you think and if they’re happy that’s value, if it’s for something you put no value on. I mean hell, Apple is clearly offering “cool in crowd” as value…

> I’m not sure how making a small number of cars for the ultra rich is “slippage” it sounds like value for specific buyers.

Because the rich can pay a huge amount for a marginal increase in usefulness. So you can increase prices more by delivering the same amount of value for the rich than for the non-rich.

> if they’re happy that’s value, if it’s for something you put no value on

And if they're not happy, just numb? An addict will pay to get their fix but it doesn't make them happy, and even they themselves would tell you there's no value or usefulness in it.

> And clearly people buy green cars.

Some people buy cars that are marketed as green, sure. You only have to look at the increasing pedestrian fatality rates in the US to see that there's some kind of market failure going on.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#352

Post by refurb »

lmm wrote: post #351
refurb wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure how making a small number of cars for the ultra rich is “slippage” it sounds like value for specific buyers. You may not like people spending money on it, but you’re not the buyer. And I don’t buy the predatory advertising idea. People aren’t as stupid as you think and if they’re happy that’s value, if it’s for something you put no value on. I mean hell, Apple is clearly offering “cool in crowd” as value…

> I’m not sure how making a small number of cars for the ultra rich is “slippage” it sounds like value for specific buyers. Because the rich can pay a huge amount for a marginal increase in usefulness. So you can increase prices more by delivering the same amount of value for the rich than for the non-rich. > if they’re happy that’s value, if it’s for something you put no value on And if they're not happy, just numb?…

Except for the pedestrians, all of your examples are just people finding value in things you don’t find value in?

Again, are you saying we should prevent people from using their own money for value you disagree with?

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#353

Post by 1dry »

aeternum wrote: post #220
1dry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that "traveling the stars" is a worthy goal, even more worthy than stewardship of the paradise we already have. We are living in heaven. We have a wonderful planet that nurtures us yet we continue to sabotage our favorable situation for the sake of growing worthless numbers like GDP, all while some people starve or are forced into lives of misery. And yes, I have read Para…

The earth is at best a temporary paradise, doomed to be burned up by a rogue asteroid or if it's exceedingly lucky its very own sun. Also incomprehensibly limited in the population and diversity of life it can support when compared with the universe. How incredibly selfish of us to decide we shall be the select few that get to live on a single planet when the universe has the potential to support so many more lives.…

I think what's selfish is romanticizing "so many more [hypothetical] lives" while real lives now are smothered for the sake of malignant capitalism. Perhaps the fact the the former takes no self sacrifice makes it an appealing viewpoint.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#354

Post by 1dry »

nverno wrote: post #148
1dry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that "traveling the stars" is a worthy goal, even more worthy than stewardship of the paradise we already have. We are living in heaven. We have a wonderful planet that nurtures us yet we continue to sabotage our favorable situation for the sake of growing worthless numbers like GDP, all while some people starve or are forced into lives of misery. And yes, I have read Para…

People can track GDP without optimizing for it at the expense of the environment. Although, metrics do seem to hack the human brain in such a way that we can't help but try to optimize them, no matter how useless they are.

Right, yet we do track all kinds of well-being related metrics, there are happiness indices and the like, yet it seems no one optimizes for them.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#355

Post by SamPatt »

aeternum wrote: post #220
1dry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that "traveling the stars" is a worthy goal, even more worthy than stewardship of the paradise we already have. We are living in heaven. We have a wonderful planet that nurtures us yet we continue to sabotage our favorable situation for the sake of growing worthless numbers like GDP, all while some people starve or are forced into lives of misery. And yes, I have read Para…

The earth is at best a temporary paradise, doomed to be burned up by a rogue asteroid or if it's exceedingly lucky its very own sun. Also incomprehensibly limited in the population and diversity of life it can support when compared with the universe. How incredibly selfish of us to decide we shall be the select few that get to live on a single planet when the universe has the potential to support so many more lives.…

Given that humanity has only existed for ~200,000 years, and the threats you've mentioned are unknown but likely millions or billions of years in the future, is it fair to say it's a "temporary paradise?"

If we could live another ten, one hundred, or a thousand of humanity's lifetimes, that's not temporary in any meaningful sense.

To put it differently: making plans today for the earth's demise due to the sun's expansion is a rather extreme case of premature optimization.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#356

Post by lmm »

refurb wrote: post #352
lmm wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sure how making a small number of cars for the ultra rich is “slippage” it sounds like value for specific buyers. Because the rich can pay a huge amount for a marginal increase in usefulness. So you can increase prices more by delivering the same amount of value for the rich than for the non-rich. > if they’re happy that’s value, if it’s for something you put no value on And if they're not happy, just numb?…

Except for the pedestrians, all of your examples are just people finding value in things you don’t find value in? Again, are you saying we should prevent people from using their own money for value you disagree with?

> Except for the pedestrians, all of your examples are just people finding value in things you don’t find value in?

No, unless you're defining value in some very strange way.

> Again, are you saying we should prevent people from using their own money for value you disagree with?

No, I'm saying we should be aware that money and value are not the same thing and our policy decisions should reflect that.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#357

Post by hnews_account_1 »

dgb23 wrote: post #300
hnews_account_1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP is not what people randomly think it is. It is a measure of the economic output of a country. It isn’t about equality or productivity or did the money build a ghost town etc. If we had the magical mathematics to encode that much in a single number, we’d be traveling the stars.

GDP as it’s measured originally? Yes. It was a measurement of actual industrial strength. But since then it also includes made up stats such as investment risks and other ideological and fantastical things? No.

This is incorrect. It is gross economic output which includes investments. Investments is real net change in money. It’s not “made up”.

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#358

Post by club_tropical »

club_tropical wrote: post #155

salus populi suprema lex The primary measure should be the physical health of the humanstock. If your "line goes up" but you have obese, mentally fragile, neurotic people on your hands, you're doing something wrong. Many things will follow naturally once you make peak physical health the top goal.

Not complaining but I have to say, being downvoted because I value actual health over some synthetic econometric measure that our managerial overlords tell us is "what akshually matters" is indefensible, y'all!

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#359

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

lmm wrote: post #240
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #204

I've thought the Gini coefficient was better than GDP ever since I learned of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

The Gini coefficient is a pure measure of inequality, you can "improve" it while making literally everyone worse off (e.g. destroy all things of value in your country, now everyone has nothing and you have perfect equality).

I mean if you "destroy all things of value in your country" I don't think you're going to be concerned about economic measures whether GDP or Gini, so isn't that kind of a red herring?

Re: Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)

#360

Post by hnews_account_1 »

SamPatt wrote: post #355
aeternum wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth is at best a temporary paradise, doomed to be burned up by a rogue asteroid or if it's exceedingly lucky its very own sun. Also incomprehensibly limited in the population and diversity of life it can support when compared with the universe. How incredibly selfish of us to decide we shall be the select few that get to live on a single planet when the universe has the potential to support so many more lives.…

Given that humanity has only existed for ~200,000 years, and the threats you've mentioned are unknown but likely millions or billions of years in the future, is it fair to say it's a "temporary paradise?" If we could live another ten, one hundred, or a thousand of humanity's lifetimes, that's not temporary in any meaningful sense. To put it differently: making plans today for the earth's demise due to the sun's expan…

It’s the next frontier and an area for expanding our technological prowess, even if we disregard the doomer psychology aspect of it. We have so much shit to do to even mine the asteroid belt that the next 100 years will look as different from now as we do from the Middle Ages. Not to mention when even further in the future we decide that interstellar travel must be attempted.
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