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Comment by mryan | Hacker News Reader

Employment and production are easy to measure. Happiness, less so.

That's a bit of an odd reason to change the whole goal, isn't it?

So we track the kinds of things that we can measure and that we hope correlate with happiness, but we carefully check that they keep doing so. We shouldn't let one of them (like "maximize production") become the end goal itself!

> That's a bit of an odd reason to change the whole goal, isn't it?

Having a goal of 'maximising production' is the status quo - I am not proposing any changes.

I agree with you that the world would be a better place if our economy was focussed on achieving maximum global happiness, I just wanted to point out why it is easier to focus on an objective, numeric value like production than a subjective feeling like happiness (Gross National Happiness notwithstanding).

Let people move without barriers. Countries will have to compete basing on happiness not production. Happiness will equalize. The only problem - population density is part of happines, so borders should be adjusted for population.

Easiest way to do both automaticaly is to let people declare which country their immediate neighborhood belongs to.

I do not think eradicating the concept of national sovereignty is the best solution to the problem. That would certainly decrease the happiness of a lot of people :-)

Then let's produce lamborghinis and mansions for everyone and automate healthcare

I'm not sure what point you are making here. It does not appear to have any connection to the point I made.

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