Steps to disillusion a young scholar

The whole thing in macroeconomic policy about optimizing economies for "GDP growth" is similar. Spend a million on healthcare, GDP goes up by a million. Spend a million on science, GDP goes up by a million. Spend a million on war, GDP goes up by a million. Spend a million on building a giant mountain out of rubber dog shit, GDP goes up by a million. See the problem? GDP is a value-neutral statistic.

The quantity-not-quality publish-or-perish mentality in academia is exactly the same. Quantity and impact of publication is a value-neutral opaque statistic like GDP, and optimizing for such statistics yields economies of ritualized masturbation.

To make matter worse, optimizing for GDP growth in economics or for quantity/impact of publications in science might be like measuring the quality of a computer programmer by lines of code written. Wouldn't an economy that can deliver an equivalent standard of living using less money be a better economy? It would be more efficient, more sustainable, etc. I know a scientist who authors a few awesome ground-breaking papers is a lot more interesting than a scientist that churns out endless papers about minutia.