a carefree society part 2

why GDP per capita is a poor measure of quality of life and standard of living

just a few examples:
*a professional counsellor who talks to you about your problems counts in GDP while a good friend who will listen and be supportive and encouraging does not
*paid work hours are in GDP but volunteering is not
*driving a car to work requires gas that counts in GDP but walking to work and getting exercise in the process does not
*fast food sold counts in GDP but food eaten from home grown gardens does not

Has it ever occured to you that perhaps the more GDP/capita increases, the more poor our life is? The more we switch the professional services for counselling and troubles, the less we are able to rely on friends, the more isolated we become and the more dependent we become on professionals to solve our problems. The more we pay toxic containment companies to clean up the pollution we've made, the less we are preventing damage to the earth. The list continues...

I have a harrowing image of what society might become like: individuals sitting in sterile, whitewashed cell-size rooms, pushing grey buttons for the delivery of all the products and services that could give them happiness. And that is life.

But wait, hasn't that already happened? Think of the internet.*

individual cells in a city.
connected by the gentle blaze of the lcd screen.
thinking, dreaming, yearning for some magical unity
only to find themselves alone.
a web of simulated connections
a web of simulated community
individual cells. imprisoned. in the city.**

*I guess you can't buy happiness at the supermarket, but I believe it can be purchased on the internet
** I am thinking of this quote by V.S. Naipaul in The Mimic Men: "How right our Aryan ancestors were to create gods. We seek sex, and are left with two private bodies on a stained bed. The larger erotic dream, the god, has eluded us. It is so whenever, moving out of ourselves, we look for extensions of ourselves. It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only a conglomeration of private cells. In the city as nowhere else we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains; it is the god of the city we pursue, in vain. "