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“I’m pleased that some economists and sociologists are beginning to talk about, for example, alternative measures of human well-being—alternative that is to GDP, on which the world runs.”
So said John Sulston at the AAAS meeting in Washington on February 20th. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2002. He talked about connections among population, the environment and economics.
“We know that our current system of economics are incomplete. And so we have for example, when we’re considering food, we have huge wastage. An awful lot of food is thrown away. This you can call a spillover. It doesn’t sort of enter into our economic system because it’s a consequence of running things in a highly competitive way: the free market, global pricing and so on. These things lead to spillovers, which is the wastage of food.
"Now, you can take the view that this doesn’t matter, and that’s what we’ve done in the past, just as we’ve been energy profligate we’ve been food profligate. It does matter if we’re coming up to the limit and we have to calculate how we’re going to stop people starving or indeed give them a better life.”
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile alternative measures are undoubtedly better assessments of human well-being, I'm skeptical that national leaders would pay attention to global standing in human well-being in preference to economic / military power and influence.
It is one thing to strive for well-being, quite another to maintain control, and arguably, without control, leaders are powerless to protect well-being.
It is a noble goal, I hope I live to see a world in which it becomes practical.
"It doesn’t sort of enter into our economic system because it’s a consequence of running things in a highly competitive way: the free market, global pricing and so on."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientificamerican.com is an American publication (site)?
The US is essentially about CAPITALISM!
Capitalism is a victorious system all around the world!
Period!
This will take time but in my opinion that is a only way out of this planet. This change will happen, capitalism will get moderated over time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing is for sure that this change will happen only when we start living like HUMANS.
Definition and Qualities of a Human Being:
Compassion
Humility
Non-Selfish
Others............
The above can happen only when we have a goal (beyond the realms of this planet) which is different from the current one.
"The US is essentially about CAPITALISM!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot exactly. The US is largely about corporate rule of politics, but the nation doesn't exactly have a free market, as laws and regulations are frequently adjusted to help current monopoly holders maintain their power.
Europe probably has a freer market economy, these days - thanks to vigorous monopoly-busting activities by the Bruessels Commission.
It is heartening indeed that leading scientists like Sir John Sulston are calling for alternative measures of human well-being: GDP that has been more or less the measure since whenever is clearly deficient on a great many counts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fundamental science that could help us develop such an alternative measure is 'systems science' - by which I mean a systems science that is practically usable by anyone living or working within a 'system', not some abstract theory that requires years of study at an advanced level to understand (and perhaps even then is impossible to apply).
Such a 'usable systems science' grows out of General Systems Theory in a natural way from the seminal contributions of the late John N. Warfield. More information about Warfield's work is available at http://www.jnwarfield.com and from "John N. Warfield Collection" held at the library of George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA, where Warfield was Emeritus Professor - see http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaead/published/gmu/vifgm00008.tp.
A highly practical tool developed from Warfield's investigations into 'complex systems' (and how we could handle issues in these complex systems) is the 'One Page Management System' (OPMS) - this enables an individual or group to identify any Mission of interest and then to develop, from currently available ideas about the Mission, an effective Action Plan to accomplish that Mission. The 'OPMS Action Plan' is claimed to be highly effective because, over iterations, it uses the inbuilt capacity of the mind to make corrections in weak/wrong ideas depending on the situations arising during working towards a Mission.
I claim that it will not be too much of an effort to re-develop 'economics' from being just the 'dismal non-science' it is today to make it an effective scientific tool to help us create, for instance, a truly effective measure of well-being of individuals and groups to ensure we obtain more realistic pictures of our societies than 'GDP' can provide.
GSC
Let's not bury our heads in the sand. The US wealth is only assured because of its constant military threat to nations which possess cheap manpower and ressources. This is not democracy.
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