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Comment by zamalek | Hacker News Reader

> This improves our wellbeing.

Which improves productivity.

But since productivity (GDP) includes stuff like making games and gambling on stocks, I'm not sure it's a number worth maximising. Wellbeing is a number worth maximising though.

There's a country already doing this. In The Kingdom of Bhutan they measure GNH, Gross National Happiness

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

As an result of this the economist Med Jones later developed the concept into what's called GNW, Gross National Well Being

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Well-being

However such measurements are rarely used and the concept have been subject for criticism even within Buthan. To the best of my knowledge Buthan is still the closest we've come to maximizing well-being nor have I heard of more effective and successful attempts.

If anyone have firsthand experience of the subject I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I saw a documentary on Bhutan the other day. A German journalist travelled through the country to see how that Gross National Happiness actually looks in practice. His summary was that Bhutan is a third-world country by any measure that we commonly use (life expectation, GDP, etc.), but overall, people indeed seem very happy. Of course, you can only go so far wrt understanding a group of people when you look at them for a week only.

Slightly related: My favorite part was when he interviewed the leader of the opposition party. "It didn't become clear what policies he's actually opposing." :)

Interesting, would you happen to know the name of this documentary?

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