"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Money is time!
People are used to say "Time is money", but I prefer saying "Money is time!" instead.
Money eases the exchange of product and services.
However for earning it we have to invest our time.
I think the problem of "Global Western Society" is the big emphasis on the qualitative dimension of money. I'm not saying, that for ensuring a decent life, you don't need some money. I just believe that having a lot of money doesn't necessarily results in high general well-being of a person.
In the nineties an economist Juliet B.Schor identify the problem of the unexpected decline of leisure time in the USA. She explains that people are locked in "the work - spend" cycle, where people work more just to have more things, but this in fact results in lower life quality due to the lack of free time.
I invite you to explore World Database of Happiness, a project of Ruut Veenhoven, one of the most prominent researchers in the field of life satisfaction. Her investigation shows that when exceeding a certain material minimum, less well off nations are not less happier then people in the rich countries.
So, which countries are in fact the richest?
Those who have the most money or those who have the highest level of live satisfaction?
Is therefore GDP the right measure to use when talking of the wealth of one country or should we use alternative measures instead?
Well, next time, when you need something really bad ... think twice ... and remember that money is time ...
Money eases the exchange of product and services.
However for earning it we have to invest our time.
I think the problem of "Global Western Society" is the big emphasis on the qualitative dimension of money. I'm not saying, that for ensuring a decent life, you don't need some money. I just believe that having a lot of money doesn't necessarily results in high general well-being of a person.
In the nineties an economist Juliet B.Schor identify the problem of the unexpected decline of leisure time in the USA. She explains that people are locked in "the work - spend" cycle, where people work more just to have more things, but this in fact results in lower life quality due to the lack of free time.
I invite you to explore World Database of Happiness, a project of Ruut Veenhoven, one of the most prominent researchers in the field of life satisfaction. Her investigation shows that when exceeding a certain material minimum, less well off nations are not less happier then people in the rich countries.
So, which countries are in fact the richest?
Those who have the most money or those who have the highest level of live satisfaction?
Is therefore GDP the right measure to use when talking of the wealth of one country or should we use alternative measures instead?
Well, next time, when you need something really bad ... think twice ... and remember that money is time ...
Views: 50
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Comment by Elastika on April 4, 2010 at 10:23am
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That's the thing Turil ... it's a hard decision which alternative measure is the most holistic one and therefore would be the best substitution for the GDP.
I also think Gross National Happiness is not the best one, I like your suggestion to replace happiness with health.
However I think we should think even further, to go beyond anthropocentric view and use a measure which shows well being of people and nature at the same time. So, I personally prefer measures as Genuine progress indicator
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Comment by Turil Cronburg on April 4, 2010 at 1:24pm
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Out of curiosity, what do you see as the difference between the GPI and GNH? To me, they seem essentially the same.
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The GPI takes into account more environmental variables. GNH just measures the present environmental damage, but GPI goes further and try to incorporate also long term environmental damage into equation.
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OK, those are specific details that could be included in both concepts. The overall idea of looking at health/wellbeing for everyone is the same, right?
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true :)
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Comment by kevin Jones on April 4, 2010 at 4:01pm
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Gnu also has multidimensional poverty measures from ophi.org.uk
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Gnh
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@kevin: that's the one turil is talking about ...
@a.v.koshy: I've just read your post and unfortunately it's so true "Money is everything today!" and I also agree with you when saying that people want it all: money, happiness and real GDP. Unfortunately a lot of people do ... however I hope that more and more people will see the beauty in voluntary simplicity and practice it ...
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Don't think the other has effective development/poverty metric or I like ophi a lot we're getting it added to fair trade audits and IM working with coops with significant zero carbon food production via reforestation which are enabled by their specialized audits of watershed/deforestation impact
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We are also auditing the growth of literacy as a key success metric of a for profit business my fund has invested in
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