Do we understand Quality of Life?
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Its no secret my opinion is that we’ve lost rational direction. I’m an anti-globalisationist at heart and see some fundamental lack of answers to economic questions about how our civilisation is going to overcome certain obstacles. After all, you can’t eat money when all the fish are gone.
I think we’ve lost sight of the difference between quality of life and our standard of living. We’ve somehow transposed those over each other as interchangeable when in fact they probably have little correlation. Do you need 400 varieties of toothpaste to have quality of life? No. In fact, take away most of our standard of living and we’re probably going to enjoy a better quality of life for it – healthier food, more exercise, less pollution.
Is life all about getting more and more resource intensive? Is life about obtaining greater variety at ever-decreasing prices? And if you think that’s the case, then tell me where your end game is – free? Because that’s what cheaper and cheaper becomes: crap and free.
It would be good to see, particularly in the more economically advanced societies, some return to quality of life as an organisational goal for the community. Would you rather have a prolonged existence or a meaningful experience? What we really need is to stop seeing economics as though it were a competitive religion as an end in itself. We should embrace certain inefficiencies and lack of choice. Why? Because we’re working on flawed assumptions. The base of our economic system is that our individual greed will benefit everybody – its called the free market.
