you're right. It's Bhutan. Ideally, the "gross domestic happiness" measurement would be weighted average of democratically-decided measures of goal-attainment, with the relative weights also decided upon democratically. (It would be a pure index number.) Obviously, raising GDH would not -- and could not -- be the only goal. Its value would be only advisory.
One problem with democracy, of course, is that democratic decisions usually do not represent the interests and values of non-citizens (as suggested by the Wikipedia story). Clearly, we need universal citizenship in a global democracy. Doug Henwood wrote: > What would be the unit of measure? > > I think you mean Bhutan, and here's what Wikipedia says about that: >> Critics allege that because GNH depends on a series of subjective judgments >> about well-being, governments may be able to define GNH in a way that suits >> their interests. In the case of Bhutan, for instance, they say that the >> government expelled about one hundred thousand people and stripped them of >> their Bhutanese citizenship on the grounds that the deportees were ethnic >> Nepalese who had settled in the country illegally. While this would reduce >> Bhutan's wealth [income?] by most traditional measures such as GDP, the >> Bhutan government claims it has not reduced Bhutan's GNH.<< similar problems are seen with GDP, of course: increasing the length of the work-week raises real GDP but increases misery. -- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
