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The value judgement in a progress index extends far beyond conflating GDP with success. Creators decide what is the "greater good." And of course it's coloured

by blfr 12y ago

The value judgement in a progress index extends far beyond conflating GDP with success. Creators decide what is the "greater good." And of course it's coloured by their tastes so higher education is included and luxury cars are not even if they're both just tokens in status games. Your absurd example is how signalling often works. In this case, if they can afford to waste gold and oil for no reason then they're clearly doing well. It's like lighting a cigar with a $100 bill, or buying a diamond ring for your fiancée.

jonex 12y ago
I think no one could argue that the creators index does not in any way reflect their values. But that doesn't make GDP any better as a measure. Think of it this way, what country would you have liked to be randomly born into the most? The one where you will be able to participate in society no matter who you are, or the one where a subset of the population makes the most money? Would you like to be born into Saudi Arabia as a woman?* They have a great GDP per capita. I think we have to accept that there is no objective measure of success of a country. In fact we haven't even figured out how to measure success of a company reliably, even if we constrain our self to measuring shareholder value. The best we can do is try finding measures that somehow correlates with quality of life and be explicit about what we are measuring. * In case you are not sure, you don't want to be born into Saudi Arabia as a woman.
lazaroclapp 12y ago
Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. Regardless of what it says about individuals, as a measure of the success of a nation, the amount of luxury cars it consumes indicates very little[1]; the reasoning skills and knowledge of their average citizen is a far more indicative of the capacity of a nation. Now, you can argue that formal higher education is not the only way to instill that knowledge and skills, and also varies widely between education systems. That much is true. But the point is to get easy to measure proxies for what you are really trying to measure. Does the amount of people that go through public education predict the average level of knowledge and reasoning of that country's citizenship better or worse than looking at the amount of things they produce and sell? (not a rhetorical question, both answers can be supported, and each leads you to either HDI or GDP as a "better" measure.) [1] Well, very little compared to what GDP+GINI would tell you
- hueving 12y ago
  > Well, very little compared to what GDP+GINI would tell you Well that's a bogus comparison. You would have to compare to GDP + luxury cars.
  - lazaroclapp 12y ago
    The idea is that a hypothetical Lamborghini-index would give you information that is essentially a tiny subset of what you'd already know from GDP+GINI. So you can compare GDP+GINI to GDP+GINI+luxury cars and conclude there is no advantage of having the extra information. It basically tells you "there are at least n people in this country who can afford a Lamborghini, furthermore if you assume that r percent of people who can afford a Lamborghini actually buy one, then this country has approx m=r*n such people". But basic economic data already lets you estimate m fairly well, so what's the need for knowing n? Perhaps if r varies a lot between countries knowing the actual number of cars gives you some extra information about how much that country in particular values cars as symbols of status. But, would that be useful? Either way, this is very tangential to the point I was trying to make, which is that education and cars are not equal measures of the development of a society and that an educated population is more that some sort of social status scorecard :)
    - hueving 12y ago
      No, my point is that you would have to compare GDP+GINI to GDP+luxury car.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. What evidence do you have of this? Further, even if true, you are still measuring the inputs rather than the outputs. Energy consumption is also highly correlated with the technological and social development of a civilization, but it would be as silly thing to include.

by blfr 12y ago

jonex 12y ago

I think no one could argue that the creators index does not in any way reflect their values. But that doesn't make GDP any better as a measure. Think of it this way, what country would you have liked to be randomly born into the most? The one where you will be able to participate in society no matter who you are, or the one where a subset of the population makes the most money? Would you like to be born into Saudi Arabia as a woman?* They have a great GDP per capita. I think we have to accept that there is no objective measure of success of a country. In fact we haven't even figured out how to measure success of a company reliably, even if we constrain our self to measuring shareholder value. The best we can do is try finding measures that somehow correlates with quality of life and be explicit about what we are measuring. * In case you are not sure, you don't want to be born into Saudi Arabia as a woman.

lazaroclapp 12y ago

Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. Regardless of what it says about individuals, as a measure of the success of a nation, the amount of luxury cars it consumes indicates very little[1]; the reasoning skills and knowledge of their average citizen is a far more indicative of the capacity of a nation. Now, you can argue that formal higher education is not the only way to instill that knowledge and skills, and also varies widely between education systems. That much is true. But the point is to get easy to measure proxies for what you are really trying to measure. Does the amount of people that go through public education predict the average level of knowledge and reasoning of that country's citizenship better or worse than looking at the amount of things they produce and sell? (not a rhetorical question, both answers can be supported, and each leads you to either HDI or GDP as a "better" measure.) [1] Well, very little compared to what GDP+GINI would tell you

hueving 12y ago
> Well, very little compared to what GDP+GINI would tell you Well that's a bogus comparison. You would have to compare to GDP + luxury cars.
- lazaroclapp 12y ago
  The idea is that a hypothetical Lamborghini-index would give you information that is essentially a tiny subset of what you'd already know from GDP+GINI. So you can compare GDP+GINI to GDP+GINI+luxury cars and conclude there is no advantage of having the extra information. It basically tells you "there are at least n people in this country who can afford a Lamborghini, furthermore if you assume that r percent of people who can afford a Lamborghini actually buy one, then this country has approx m=r*n such people". But basic economic data already lets you estimate m fairly well, so what's the need for knowing n? Perhaps if r varies a lot between countries knowing the actual number of cars gives you some extra information about how much that country in particular values cars as symbols of status. But, would that be useful? Either way, this is very tangential to the point I was trying to make, which is that education and cars are not equal measures of the development of a society and that an educated population is more that some sort of social status scorecard :)
  - hueving 12y ago
    No, my point is that you would have to compare GDP+GINI to GDP+luxury car.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. What evidence do you have of this? Further, even if true, you are still measuring the inputs rather than the outputs. Energy consumption is also highly correlated with the technological and social development of a civilization, but it would be as silly thing to include.