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by maratc 309 days ago
But that's the same with GDP: if you and me are living on an uninhabited island and grow/catch all of our food for consumption, our GDP is $0. If however I rent out my bungalow to you and rent yours instead, and I sell you all my food and buy your food instead, somehow our GDP skyrockets.
3 comments

> if you and me are living on an uninhabited island and grow/catch all of our food for consumption, our GDP is $0

No. The imputed value of goods produced for self-consumption is included in GDP calculations.

The UN SNA term of art is own final consumption: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/docs/SNA2008.pdf

That's false equivalence. GDP being gameable does not mean the metric has anything to do with how valuable the output of each individual worker is, yet the metric suggests the opposite - if you made a metric like 'Number of Nobel laureates per large bodies of water', that would imply the presence of large lakes somehow aids or hinders top-tier scientific research, which is obviously a false premise.
My only argument is that both metrics are gameable in a way.

> if you made a metric like 'Number of Nobel laureates per large bodies of water'

That's a strawman argument.

Same as cooking for youtself or family/friends, taking care of family/friends, exercising, anything that doesn't involve accounting transactions basically.