Measuring a society's progress

How should we measure the progress that we make as society and nations? The ridiculousness of our reliance on GDP performance (Gross Domestic Product) is so evident that decisions taken on this basis are becoming dangerous. GDP is a monochromatic aggregate number that takes into account everything that a nation "produces", including wars, epidemics, pollution, etc - all on the "plus" side. Alternatives are needed. My American friend Eric Weiner, who's writing a book on the geography of happiness (see my other blog for details - and if you are Swiss or live in Switzerland, please do take a couple of minutes to consider the questions in that post and maybe add your comments) is just back from a trip to Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan nation that has invented a radically new metric: Gross National Happiness. He wrote in an article for the Los Angeles Times:

Bhutanese officials make decisions based, in part, on whether they will contribute to the nation's collective happiness. (...) This means sometimes making decisions that, from an economist's point of view, make no sense. Bhutan, a beautiful land of mountains and temples, has forsaken millions of tourist dollars by, in effect, restricting the number of foreign visitors. (It does this by charging a $200 daily fee.) And while other developing countries have sold off their natural resources to the highest bidder, Bhutan has hardly touched its timber and minerals. The country also has taken some unusual steps to protect its Tibetan Buddhist culture. (...) We might find such rules onerous but, having recently spent several weeks in the country, I found most Bhutanese happily accept such trade-offs.
The Bhutanese, of course, are enticed by the goodies of the West. Cellphones and Internet cafes are in vogue, and there is more than one disco in the capital (though no traffic lights). But many Bhutanese are willing to forsake money for happiness; for a slower, more human pace of life. The vast majority of Bhutanese who study abroad, for instance, return to their homeland, where they earn a fraction of what they could earn in the West.

Of course the concept of GNH may be an easy slogan to cover government ineptitude or worse. And Bhutan has crime and unhappy people, and is still a poor country. But the Bhutanese approach reframes the question about growth as the best - or the only - way for a country to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number of its citizens. One Chinese province is developing a happiness index, writes Eric, and the leader of Britain's Conservative Party has floated the idea of General Well-Being as a way to gauge a nation's progress.

Comments

[DT]

Although apparently not directly related to the subject, may I bring to your attention a short book by Jean-François Billeter, a swiss native, intitled "Chine trois fois muette".
As the title does not say, half of the book deals with the drawbacks and misery of what is called economic development. Brilliant, innovative and rather provocative. Naturally, it ends with a deep analysis of the chinese situation.

[andrew jones]

GDP was actually invented during WWII as a measure for supplying the war.

link: http://dieoff.org/page11.htm

You probably already know that, but ya know. Never know. Anyway nice blog. Been watching the TED videos a bit recently. The arguement against using GDP and working on a different metric has been around for awhile it is after all as if we've never left war and just moved the front to business which might explain how logistics, a military term, has come to be an entire industry.

Thanks,
A

[EthanZ]

It's certainly worth looking beyond GDP as a single indicator for national success. Looking at progress on the human development index, on environmental factors and on social satisfaction are all good possible ideas. And the concept of a national happiness index is certainly an intriguing one to almost everyone who encounters it.

But it's worth remembering that Bhutan's path towards happiness is a complicated one. There's an ongoing refugee situation which resulted from the expulsion of over a hundred thousand ethnic Nepali citizens, which turned them into stateless refugees. Some have suggested that the expulsion of Nepali speakers was a way of silencing political dissent - others have suggested that it's an attempt at creating ethnic homogeneity in the country, as the refugees were forced out of a part of the country which had become majority Nepali.

Writing about these issues in Bhutan has been an interesting experience. I made a single post - over a year ago - about these issues, titled "Not Everyone is Happy In the Hermit Kingdom". Rarely does a week go by that I don't get an angry comment or email from someone in Bhutan accusing me of being unfairly biased towards their country or suggesting that I'm a crypto-Nepali dedicated to the overthrow of their nation. One wonders whether a strong campaign against dissent is part of the strategy for national happiness...

[BG]

It doesn't seem to far-fetched to speculate that creating ethnic homogeneity, rather than silencing dissent, may be part of the strategy for national happiness. But thanks for pointing out the refugees situation, Ethan. On the point of moving away from the war, Andrew, let's not forget that most of the international architecture (starting with the UN: think "permanent member" of the security council) is still based on wartime and post-wartime geopolitical realities.