[hmkpoker]

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For the austrians here, what statistics should we be using to measure the health of an economy?

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This is like asking the Austrians, "Ok, so if you don't like democracy, how SHOULD we pick our national leaders?"

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I'm pretty good in ACese, but this flew completely over my head. You guys keep saying how everyone's life will be better under AC, but where would the evidence show up?

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This is like asking what metric we should use to figure out whether a Picasso is "better" than a Degas. The only way you can do that is to define art by an objective, absolute quantity, and that's impossible. Art is a very relative quality, and cannot be measured objectively.

Neither can the "economy." In theory, the best way to measure the "economy" is by the aggregate amount of utility that is produced. But that's impossible; utility is subjective and only demonstrable ordinally, not cardinally.

By which quality should society be measured? The gross amount of monetary transactions? The equality of distribution of goods and services? By the aggregate amount of observable dopamine transmissions in the status quo? The employment rate? The life span? The crime rate?

What do you do when it turns out that some people value different things than other people? How do you reconcile hippie-like people who don't like to work and live a very cheap lifestyle and are perfectly happy with it? And what happens when people elect to engage in activities that don't immediately yield some kind of elevated serotonin levels?

What statistic do you think should be the metric that reflects the ideal quality of human life?