A narrow econometric indicator of national economic activity used as a surrogate for human success.
GDP is a flawed and dangerous measurement of prosperity. It counts all monetary transactions as “positive,” even those that represent social or ecological destruction. For instance, the cleanup of an oil spill or the legal costs of a divorce both increase GDP.
The limitations of the metric:
- Econometric Myopia: It prioritizes capital growth over human health, social justice, and spiritual fulfillment.
- Extractive Logic: It ignores the long-term cost of resource depletion and ignores non-monetary value like care work or community resilience.
- Individualistic: It focuses on the accumulation of the few at the expense of the many.
In the universal prosperity model, GDP is replaced with multidimensional metrics that account for the health of the entire ecosystem (mundo level).