I understand GP's post in a different way - While I consider economic indicators to be very important, I think they fail to measure properly "quality of life" while ate the same time being used as surrogate for it.
For example, a public park may be a great asset to the people that live around it. But it generates little to none in terms of GDP. Privatizing it and turning it into a parking lot has more economic activity, while making the lives of people meaningfully worse.
That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction is what turns us into "slaves of the economy"
Feels like a cousin of the McNamara fallacy: what can't be (or simply isn't) measured may as well not exist. (Probably most people who have encountered OKRs are familiar with this).
RFK (the original one, not the brainworm one):
> The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
> That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction
We do have many measurements to reconcile that.
We know how much particulate air pollution from fossil fuel combustion increases health care expenditures. We know how not having save places to exercise outdoors affects general health and results in sedentary lifestyle diseases.
But most of our decisions, individually and as a society, are predicated on short term convenience and gratification, not long term health, so we ignore the measures we already have.
> It's weird to me that we organise our lives based on one social science and ignore all the others.
40-50% of most countries production goes to government projects, so no we don't ignore everything else than capitalism. We are about 50-60% capitalist at most.
Note that government projects also need you to work, work is a part of every system, it isn't capitalism that forces you to work people are forced to work in socialist and communist states as well.
> 40-50% of most countries production goes to government projects, so no we don't ignore everything else than capitalism. We are about 50-60% capitalist at most.
Sorry, I don't get how this relates to what I said. I mentioned that it's surprising that we use one model of the world to organise our society (i.e economics) and you countered that the government is part of the economy (which is trivially true, but doesn't really relate to my point). Can you help me understand what you mean here?
For example, a public park may be a great asset to the people that live around it. But it generates little to none in terms of GDP. Privatizing it and turning it into a parking lot has more economic activity, while making the lives of people meaningfully worse.
That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction is what turns us into "slaves of the economy"