Our current models say we are winning but we are losing
We are measuring and celebrating the wrong things.
GDP measures nothing more than the speed with which stuff and money pass through the economy, all the while excluding millions of hours of unpaid labour, and the minimum of $4.7trillion cost EVERY year of harm to our natural capital – a cost that is ignored by the ‘titans’ of industry as they bloat in excess while the effect of their efforts burns the world for all, including themselves.
What else might we measure?
New Zealand has made a bold start. Kate Raworth’s work on Doughnut Economics proposes a different lens.
What might we measure and celebrate?
Access for all to clean water, clean air, healthy soil, education, health care?
The all-in-accounting cost of everything we make?
The return to a world where the gap between the wealthy and everyone else is almost non-existent? (In studies on societal collapse, an increased divide between the wealthy and the poor is one of three common elements that bring about collapse. And to be clear, collapse affects everyone, including those who have much.)
The amount of Earth (land and oceans) secured from any form of exploitation and extraction…returned to the Commons?
The reduction in animal extinction rates?
The reduced need for arms/munitions/guns/weapons of war?
Communities that have 100% waste recycling, renewable energy, and local food production?
Perhaps it is past time to hold our bloated CEOs as the Gods set to save us? (Elon Musk gets paid 40,000 times more than the average worker…on what planet is this something to be admired?)
Perhaps they are indeed part of the problem?
What would you like to see measured? And how do we create enterprises that hold these measures as the whole point?
This is my life work.
June 13th 2019
Photo taken June 13th, 2019
