The recent oil disaster in the gulf of Mexico has caused a rise in the gross domestic product (GDP) adjoining countries. The same happened in Alaska when back in 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez created the biggest natural disaster till that moment. But the Alaskan GDP rose because never had there been so much activity in the country. Hotels, restaurants, shops and gas stations did serious business.
This example shows how absurd it is to use economic growth as a sole indicator of progress. Quality of life is not just measured by the number of produced units. A cynic could say: ‘the more disasters the more employment’.
Too much and too often quality is translated into quantitative units such as time and money, preferably described in SMART-terms; specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic and time-wise. But it is a weak distillate of quality. The principle of working as cost-efficiently as possible – as in working as fast as possible – is regarded more important than quality. This is why the homecare companies have their employees clear the job in seven-minute units. Time units have also been introduced in youth care, police work and education. It takes guts to leave this be and steering towards mutual faith. Just imagine that someone would have stood next to Dr. King when he announced that “I have a dream” and this guy would have said: “Right sir. So what will it cost and when will it be ready?” Probably nothing would have happened and the current inhabitant of Washington’s White House would not have had a colored skin and be named Obama.
It is time to focus differently on our society and appreciate more issues that are less tangible and expressible in terms of money. For instance a forest in which people roan about quietly on a Sunday morning is of immeasurable value. It embeds true happiness. Sales revenue and profits when sold to a project developer seem hardly the equivalent of this. Even if we add the income on selling houses that will most certainly be built on the newly available compound. I think we should take into consideration the immeasurable yet tangible income and expenses.
It is obvious that we are a long way ahead. Just look at the CO2 emissions due to the use of fossil fuel. The damage done is hardly ever calculated in the costs of a product.
tagged with: knowledge management, implicit, framing, smart
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Comments
I have a lot of sympathy for the sentiment you express. Our society has become so focussed on economic values that we have made them a goal by itself rather than as a way to create enough enough surplus to have a nice and/or meaningful life. Is it a coincidence that we are breaking our society because of a problems created by the financial sector? Probably not. However, I have to disagree with your sentiment that the problem is measuring, and valueing the problem. We cannot and should not avoid the hard problems we face by just saying that they donot exist by not trying to get a hold on the scope of the problem. Luther Kings speach resonated in deeply emotional ways that served as a great call to arms for the US to do something about the injustice to blacks. People respond to rhetoric and emotions. I hope you agree however, that knowing the extend of poverty, backwardness in schooling, and discriminationary practices was necessary (and shocking!) to do something about it. It is telling that the oil industry is trying to discredit scientists with hard data because at the end of the day that data is increasingly hard to deny. The problem is not that CO2 emissions are measured, the problem is that the price the world is going to pay is not really hurting us, really not even in terms of higher prices, but our children and many generations to come. What I do agree with, is that you cause lots of problems if you only look at easily measurable quantities like worktime (Excel sheets are the root of many evils). On the other hand, again we cannot avoid the hard reality that if we do nothing then we will spend _all_ of our money on healthcare, which we obviously cannot. Long before, we will have to make a choice between caring for the elderly, educating our children andbailing out the banks
. Therefore we cannot to make choices and we have to put a budget on care, education, the environment and bailing banks. What I worry about is that we will make the wrong choices.
Rogier
Rogier
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