suggestions on measuring success

so i have complained about the current measurement practices, and in some cases suggested the measures are a cynical ploy to condition our behaviour toward being a good capitalist-consumer.  but without any suggestions to improve, it is just a whinge.  so in an attempt to be constructive....

as per the previous post, you get what you incentivise.  so when designing your measuring tools, you need to look carefully at what results you hope to achieve, ensure that any incentives complement the target results, and then design your measurement tools to accurately track progress toward the desired results.

given my main criticisms of capitalism is the consequences on the health and wellbeing of humans everywhere, it would make sense that my suggested desired outcomes, and therefore incentives and corresponding measurements, need to be centred around human health and wellbeing.

desired outcomes, in no particular order:
- longer lifespan;
- healthier;
- safer;
- happier;
- more productive;
- better educated;

clearly, some of these are pretty intangible and so designing effective incentives and measurement tools...  lets use the word challenging.

longer lifespan - pretty universal to want this, but providing for all the needs of citizens would improve the life, and thereby incentivise staying alive longer.  as for measuring, take the average lifespan.  this should really be the primary, defining statistic by which countries are judged, and also by which the performance of politicians is judged.

healthier - again pretty universal, no need to incentivise i would suggest.  more difficult to measure this.  could do trips to the doctor/hospital per citizen.  could take the raw reported diseases (occurrences of, for example, heart attacks per period).  could use readings of blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI etc so long as the sample size was statistically significant enough.  not directly measuring increased health, but average time per day spent exercising would presumably have a positive correlation.

safer - no incentivisation required, although penalising offenders is in effect incentivising this.  i would suggest raw reported offences (eg number of murders during the period).

happier - probably the most difficult due to the subjective nature of the outcome.  while happiness would be different for everybody, and have different causes, certain underlying factors would be correlated.  having all your basic needs met.  the perception that your quality of life is improving (perhaps increased luxuries, more convenience, reduced working hours, more leisure, maybe even increased knowledge and education).  the perception that society is fair and equitable.  the perception that the future will be good.  i can't think of a good measure to ensure this is actually improving over time - perhaps the best that could be done is statistically significant surveys of happiness.

more productive - and just to be clear here, not the inflated monetary price of the total goods and services produced.  more production means more goods and services to consume, meaning a higher standard of living.  ideally comprehensive data on every good and service produced would be great, however the time and resources taken to collect such comprehensive income probably exceed the benefit.  and even with this comprehensive data, how do you aggregate it if you don't use an artificial currency?  an imperfect solution would be to use hours worked.

as mentioned in the "day in the life" post, citizens would need to work a minimum quota of hours to be eligible to receive their basic needs plus luxuries up to the basic level.  citizens can then work extra hours to earn extra hours to buy additional luxuries, to trade, or to gift to others depending on their preference.  in effect, hours becomes a defacto currency, but a currency that can't be manipulated by the government, traders, doesn't have an exchange rate.  the auditors would be tasked with keeping the system honest, ensuring hours recorded were backed up with appropriate records, that qualifying businesses were producing products and services that were actually demanded, ensuring efficiency benchmarks were being complied with, or else businesses would lose their certification (ie citizens couldn't work there and have their work hours contribute to the minimum quota).

i envisage total hours worked would be captured on a 'citizen card', adding hours worked, deducting hours 'spent', much the same as credit cards currently work but using the hours 'currency'.  having this data on transactional cards would result in all the data being captured, so it would be available to be used.  the underlying prices of all the products and services produced would still reflect the market supply and demand, thus utilising the key benefit of capitalism - the communication of information as to where additional resources  could best be allocated.

final desired outcome - better education.  simple enough to track what percentage of the population is finishing high school / trade apprenticeship / degree / post grad / masters.  you could also track 'hours' spent purchasing an education (even when items are free under basic human needs eg minimum daily calories, i envisage they would be charged to the citizen card by the business providing the good / service, and then rebated back.  this would provide lots of great data for tracking purposes).  but an underlying question with education is - what are you being taught?  i imagine nazi germany was quite happy with the investment and the results it was getting from the education system they implemented.  as such i would suggest the auditors need to be active in certifying courses, benchmarking them against (competitors / other countries), and removing certification from the bottom 5-10%, as with the less-efficient businesses.

of course, many of these measures are present in capitalist societies today.  however to a large extent, they are treated as light news, almost unworthy of serious attention, whereas governments live and die by the economic indicators GDP, unemployment and inflation.  i think the above measures tell a much more complete story of how society is tracking - depending on what your desired outcomes are.

if the desired outcome is merely consumer-capitalist drones that exist to maximise profits of key companies, GDP, unemployment and inflation are good.  GDP - more profit.  unemployment / inflation - too high a reading, and the drones might realise they are being taken for a ride.