Thursday, April 7, 2011

Pool Table Dimensions



By Alberto D. Oliver Fraile
It is increasingly clear that economic indicators are not sufficient to measure the welfare of society. However, the fate of our civilization and our lives are governed by the Domestic Product (GDP).
The health of our society is measured by the number of registered cars, subways built, lumber, products consumed, handsets sold ... but obviously the mood of people living in it or the strength of ecosystems the host. Although GDP is not just a bland and certainly gross growth rate, leads them all with his tongue hanging out. We work 50 hours per GDP, pay mortgages slave by the GDP, our governments cut social benefits by GDP, we retire postmortem by GDP.
If we produce, consume, destroy ... the god of demand growth, all going well. But if GDP falls by one tenth beginning to come over the horizon the horsemen of the apocalypse: crisis, recession, settings, cuts ... But is there life beyond the Gross Domestic Product happy? Have we come to this world to produce or be happy? "To do or eat?

Faced with this reality, more and more voices are beginning to call for the creation of alternative measurement indices, instead of looking at the production put the focus on the happiness of people. Because if something is measured, there is and can be managed.
is a fact that GDP dehumanizes the person and the child becomes a cog in the system of production-consumption-waste. And the destruction of ecosystems and resources, or we speak, the more you destroy, the more the GDP grows. So being anti-ecological, as this model is good for the economy.
Although in our societies social success is to have more cars, more televisions, more clothes, more, more, more ... we began to realize the shortcomings of a system that is crumbling.
collateral damage and are too obvious to hide: pollution, destruction of landscape, biodiversity loss, debt, dissatisfaction, loss of sense ... I really would measure index the functioning of our economic system is the Gross Internal Destruction (DIB).
is time to oust the GDP as a compass that points to our north. A compass that does not work and leads to collapse, because it attempts to make us believe that we can grow infinitely in a finite planet. Maybe tap measure and increase our Gross Domestic Happiness. Because, like many we suspect, the real development of a case where the advances in material and spiritual complement.

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