GDP: A poor metric of wellbeing

[cybercoma]

GDP only works as a predictor of well-being up to a certain point. Developing nations certainly benefit from greater GDPs. GDP doesn't matter in the OECD nations however (so long as they don't fall to developing nation levels obviously). At that point what matters is the GINI coefficient. This is very strongly correlated with health and social well-being in a country. So it's not an either-or answer. GDP matters, but only so much. After that income disparity matters more.

Edited April 21, 2013 by cybercoma

[August1991]

Cybercoma,

Robert F. Kennedy may only have said the words.

But imagine a world in which such a politician hired a speechwriter, and said the words in public.

Edited June 21, 2013 by August1991

[Bryan]

We've used about half the oil we've ever found and it's only recently that prices have started to rise.

There are more known oil reserves now than there have ever been. Since the hew and cry over oil "running out" began in the 70's, the supply has increased substantially. In the US, they've doubled since the late 80's! Wells thought to have been dry have refilled, active wells are producing far more oil than predicted, and deposits are being found in places thought to have none.

Bottom line, there is a LOT of oil out there, a lot more than we ever thought. Some geochemists even think that oil fields may be refilling themselves naturally.

[Moonlight Graham]

Nobody said GDP was a measure of wellbeing, it's a measure of the economy.

Exactly.

[dre]

But why should we assume "today's technology" (as you put it) when the conditions you assume are not true today, but will only (possibly) be true in the future, when technology will have likely improved further. Based on recent trends, it will be at least several decades before 80% of the world's population is anywhere close to the economic standards of Canada. What technologies will we have developed by then? How much will they have modified our ability to develop and extract resources, to use new resources, to reduce pollution and do things more cleanly, etc? It is quite possible that technology will have advanced enough such that by the time that 80% of the world's population is at our living standards, that such standards will be sustainable. And there are a lot of smart people working to ensure just that.

You are making a quantitative statement, without any numbers to back it up. Sorry, but that has no credibility. You may well be correct that at the present level of technological development, if we wanted everyone to live at the standard that people in North America do, that there would not be sufficient resources available. But saying that the population needs to be cut in half (not by 10%, not by 90% or 99%, but specifically by 50%) is a very precise quantitative claim that must be backed by evidence.

In most cases you are right... that technology will emerge to solve all these problems. But its still a dangerous assumption to make.

Keep in mind, the world is supporting 7 billion people right now (and now without many problems), but the majority of this 7 billion lives in quite poor conditions in areas that are not fully (if at all) industrialized, with a big portion of these still living subsistent agricultural lives. If say at least 80% of countries in the world were as economically developed/industrialized as Canada/Western Europe etc., it's very uncertain (in fact, I highly doubt) whether the earth's natural resources and the overall environment would be able to support such a developed population, or if it would even be possible to begin with (especially given today's technology). Consumption, pollution, human waste, fossil fuel use etc. would rise significantly, & my guess is most of these areas would more than double.

In my view, for the vast majority of the global population to live in conditions of high economic and overall human development in our current age, the global population should ideally be cut in half at least.

Energy is the least of our worries, the biggest problem is food. There is only fertile soil on about 11% of the earths service, and we are losing 75 billion tons per year to soil erosion and we are having to abandon agricultural areas because we are ruining the soil. If it continues there will be a major food crisis in the next 30 years. China will probably face a crisis sooner than that... they have lost 24 000 villages to desertification in the last 50 years, and the ammount of land useful for agriculture is rapidly decreasing.

Soil erosion is by far the biggest obstacle and our agricultural practices are not sustainable even with our current population. We have developed technology to grow more food per acre of land, but you can only go so far with that, and the chemicals we use to do it make the problem worse.