"The SEDA, or Sustainable Economic Development Assessment ranks more than 160 countries across 10 areas including economic stability, health, governance and env

"The SEDA, or Sustainable Economic Development Assessment ranks more than 160 countries across 10 areas including economic stability, health, governance and environment." A country's SEDA score could easily go up or down drastically based on the weighting of those 10 different areas. The purpose of GDP is to give a precise measure of our intuitive notion of "prosperity". This is an inherently flawed goal. GDP roughly corresponds with what we want to measure -- countries with higher GDP usually match those we intuitively regard as more prosperous. But, having citizens buy foreign holidays and plasma screen TVs with credit card debt boosts GDP. New technology which cuts the cost of some good can lower GDP. It's a flawed measure. As with "Gross National Happiness", SEDA strikes me as an attempt to find an alternative to GDP which measures "what we really want to get at". The thing is, "happiness" is both personal and complicated. I'm sure the society depicted in Brave New World would have both a high GDP and high SEDA score but it's not what I'd regard as bolstering "well-being". Conversely, I'd be pretty happy living in an Anathem-type society (monasteries filled with scientists and philosophers), even though they lived in material poverty.