GDP’s status as the success metric distorts national priorities toward unsustainable consumption.

Evidence

The success of societies is being judged, in large part, by overall output of goods and services (GDP). This indicator is often misinterpreted as reflecting national well-being. However, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the emphasis on the GDP as a single summary measure of national progress (Gertner, 2010; Stiglitz, 2009). It disregards whether the products are good or bad and does not take into account the environmental costs that their production incurs. Bad products can harm the environment and worsen quality of life in a society. It also disregards sustainability. For example, GDP can be boosted in the short-term by rapid depletion of resources as in rampant deforestation and depletion of fish stocks via bottom trawling by fishing fleets. Countries strive for what is measured as success. This invests the GDP indicator with distorting influence favoring extensive production of goods for high consumption lifestyles. The net result is an acknowledged flawed market indicator driving excessive and wasteful consumption that further burdens efforts to preserve an environmentally sustainable future. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2963

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Addison/Kahn institutional literature on how metrics shape behavior, and to claims that measurement choices embed value assumptions. — connects to: Unsustainable resource plunder is mis-counted as productive growth instead of a loss to GNP. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 376
• SHARE: Worth sending to an economist or policy person interested in how the GDP metric structurally punishes sustainability.
• SEED: Angle: what we measure becomes what we organize for — the GDP-as-design-flaw argument as an instance of instrument-driven rationality.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2963