My point is just that progress is a vector, is has direction, and our economic theories generally ignore this and treat it as a scaler: if the number is going u

My point is just that progress is a vector, is has direction, and our economic theories generally ignore this and treat it as a scaler: if the number is going up then things must be good. When actually, the number going up just means that we're moving quickly in an arbitrary direction that has nothing to do with our needs and very well may be undermining them.