The answer to this always seemed self evident - ask people. Obviously this will be exceptionally subjective, but the entire point of all of these ostensibly "objective" metrics is to work to maximize the subjective metrics. Nobody gives a fly fark if a GDP is 37 or 38201784, but everybody cares about which place offers a more pleasant life.
When those objective metrics do map strongly to the subjective metrics, then it's awesome. But the problem is that in practice near to any objective metric can be completely and utterly gamed in, more or less, "honest" ways. Essentially, a government can find ways to increase it without increasing the things that it's supposed to represent. But you can't game how people themselves perceive things without outright lying and fraud.
The subjective metrics would also measure things objective metrics fail on hard. For instance war, as the aggressor or 'backer', is absolutely awesome for near to every economic metric. And national "defense" was one of the big winners in this GDP report. But do these wars provide a subjective quality of life improvement, or deterioration, for people? Basically I don't think the goal of the government should be to provide value to shareholders. That's the point of private industry and capitalism at large. The point of the government is to create a desirable state of life for people living within a country.
> When those objective metrics do map strongly to the subjective metrics, then it's awesome. But the problem is that in practice near to any objective metric can be completely and utterly gamed in, more or less, "honest" ways. Essentially, a government can find ways to increase it without increasing the things that it's supposed to represent. But you can't game how people themselves perceive things without outright lying and fraud.
Subjective metrics are even easier to game though. Just dope everyone up, or tell them every other country is worse off, or.... And it's harder to prove lying or fraud because it's all subjective ideas, whereas when you have an objective number then at least if someone actually lies about the number that's provable.
> And national "defense" was one of the big winners in this GDP report. But do these wars provide a subjective quality of life improvement, or deterioration, for people?
The point of defense spending is so that you don't get invaded. Getting invaded tends to cause a major deterioration in quality of life.
When those objective metrics do map strongly to the subjective metrics, then it's awesome. But the problem is that in practice near to any objective metric can be completely and utterly gamed in, more or less, "honest" ways. Essentially, a government can find ways to increase it without increasing the things that it's supposed to represent. But you can't game how people themselves perceive things without outright lying and fraud.
The subjective metrics would also measure things objective metrics fail on hard. For instance war, as the aggressor or 'backer', is absolutely awesome for near to every economic metric. And national "defense" was one of the big winners in this GDP report. But do these wars provide a subjective quality of life improvement, or deterioration, for people? Basically I don't think the goal of the government should be to provide value to shareholders. That's the point of private industry and capitalism at large. The point of the government is to create a desirable state of life for people living within a country.