One, two, three, four, ...

In the context of how the GDP is an awful metric of conditions in a country, Joseph Stiglitz phrased it well when he said that we ought to measure what we value and not value whatever it is that can be easily measured.  It is relatively easy to measure the GDP or the Dow Jones Index.  And we are fixated on measures like those.

Why measure?  Why put a number on anything?  Because, it comes across as so scientific if we did it that way.  As simple as that.

It was in graduate school that I understood the power of numbers, and how they can be abused as well.   The condescension towards research that did not involve numbers and statistical/mathematical modeling was simply nauseating.  It has gotten worse over the past decades.

There is a long history of this.  And thinkers have also cautioned us about this "metric fixation."

Sometimes what can be measured is not very important, and what is important, like morale, cannot be measured. Or an institution with many goals might choose to measure only one.

We can think about any number of examples.  In contemporary higher education, too, of course:

[Jerry] Muller, a well-known historian of ideas, explains why he turned to a topic so different from his earlier work on the history of capitalism and conservatism. After becoming history department chair, he was forced to spend more and more time collecting meaningless statistics in a sort of arms race with other chairs gaming the system for competitive advantage. He soon recognized, however, that the effort to measure performance took up so much time that performance itself suffered. Moreover, universities hired ever more people to collect government-mandated numbers and so devoted fewer of their resources to what really mattered.

Sigh!

Perhaps you are thinking that such behavior happens only in "inefficient" areas like higher education.  Not!  It afflicts "the military, medicine, police work, universities, elementary education, charity, foreign aid, and, of course, business."

So, back to the GDP.  Consider, for instance, one of the biggest problems even now, and which will worsen into the future--taking care of the elderly.  What has measurement got to do with it?

[More than] 43.5 million people who provide their loved ones with what AARP estimates to be US$470 billion worth of care – an amount that exceeds the gross domestic product of 170 of the world’s 195 nations.
Because no money changes hands, economists don’t count unpaid caregiving when they tabulate GDP – the sum of all economic activity.

When we don't measure what we value, it also means that we aren't preparing "for the coming wave of elderly Americans, millions of whom will require assistance."

I can only measure my sighs!