but do we really want to throw out all numbers?

aren't some measures useful, even necessary, for detecting, identifying, and evaluating problems and measuring progress in reducing those problems?  that is, i think, what Karl Popper was advocating when he wrote of "piecemeal social engineering":

The politician who adopts this method may or may not have a blueprint of society before his mind, he may or may not hope that manking will one day realize an ideal state, and achieve happiness and perfection on earth. But he will be ware that perfection, it at all attainable, is far distant, and that every generation of men, and therefore also the living, have a claim; perhaps not so much a claim to be made happy, for there are not institutional means of making a man happy, but a claim not be to made unhappy, where it can be avoided. They have a claim to be given all possible help, if they suffer. The piecemeal engineer will, accordingly, adopt the method of searching for, and fighting agaginst, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good.

if so, then maybe someone should be saying that at this conference.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

However, putting these measures into a coherent framework is a lot of work! I started a hobby project in doing this last year (see this diary), but quickly found that it is very time-intensive. Would love to go to the conference, but I have a budget to think about. I hope there's good documentation.

The "Beyond GDP" website FAQ mentions this approach, albeit very briefly:

Beyond GDP - International Conference - 19 & 20 November 2007, Brussels

Indicator sets (e.g. those comprised of environmental, economic and social indicators) are yet another way of complementing the single use of GDP. A recently started effort - the Canadian Index of Well-being - is under development in Canada.

The Canadian Index of Well-being's Contribution to Beyond GDP "Virtual Indicator Expo" (PDF) states that:

The CIW will track changes in eight quality-of-life domains.

These are:

     Living Standards
     Healthy Populations
     Educated Populace
     Vital Communities
     Ecosystem Health
     Civic Engagement
     Time Use
     Arts and Culture

In fact, though, there are plenty of "indicator sets" already available, provided for example by the OECD, EuroStat, Worldmapper, and others, many linked to on the "Beyond GDP" website.

The big question is:  Is it easier to persuade everyone to do away with a single indicator altogether for measuring the overall health of a society, or is it easier to come up a composite index (i.e. a single number) that while not perfect at least takes into consideration a far broader and more pertinent set of factors than the unidimensional GDP we have now?

(Actually, even the Canadian Index of Well-being project hedges a bit in that paper --

The domains will be blended into a composite index that will provide a quick snapshot of
whether overall Canadian wellbeing is changing for better or for worse. CIW reports will
present detailed information on both the composite index and the individual domains. The
CIW's `basket' of domains will be reported regularly with clarity about trends and interrelated
stories (e.g., "While X is on the rise, it is interesting to note that Y is flat, and Z is declining.
Possible explanations include...").

-- no doubt in acknowledgement of the possibility that people will continue to discuss, compare, judge, criticize, rank, etc. in terms of a single number.)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

The Human Development Index (HDI) then represents the average of the following three general indices:

• Life Expectancy Index =
• Education Index =
  • Adult Literacy Index (ALI) =
  • Gross Enrolment Index (GEI) =
• GDP Index =

LE: Life expectancy at birth
ALR: Adult literacy rate (ages 15 and older)
CGER: Combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools
GDPpc: GDP per capita at PPP in USD

It's possible that the EU is just trying to come up with a measure that makes it look better than the US, but I think the problem is that the EU has gotten itself into a pinch with its Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, especially on the "Growth" bit, because "growth" is not sustainable as currently configured (for a data point, see my diary Spain is unsustainable on November 11th, 2007). It has been suggested to make non-renewable resource extraction (which is not "production"!) contribute a negative amount to GDP as a way to measure "sustainable" growth.

On the "jobs" part of the Lisbon strategy, when one thinks that filling a call centre with telemarketers counts as "jobs", one realizes that there's more to a sensible employment policy than to get people to spend 8 hours a day doing no matter what to earn a living.

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo

(^_-)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

And to be honest, I am still nervously trying to decipher Zwackus's meaning in his comment that If the thought of cost even occurs to you, you're probably not the kind of person they're inviting.

Having said that, I think it's asking too much of the EU to go from 0 to 100 in one step: i.e. from single-location, physical attendance-based conferences to completely web-based, open to all, global virtual forums (even Yearly Kos is primarily physical attendance-based, right?); drop all the trappings of elitish academic/political/bureaucratic conferences (e.g. cocktail receptions and white papers); and, with regards to the substance of this conference, going from the total domination of GDP to dropping single indicators as a bad idea altogether.

Shouldn't we draw encouragement from the fact that such an establishment-based conference that formally and publicly (although without as much fanfare as it could have had) proposes to overturn the GDP monocracy?

Or do we throw out the baby of institutional evolution and stirrings for progress with the water of inevitable (yet temporary) intitutional inertia?

Put differently, do we compromise and work within and through the system trying to make incremental changes, or do we check out altogether and try to change things in our own self-initiated partnerships and communities outside established institutions?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.