GDP is the thing we should measure because without it, you can't have all the things you mentioned - you might be able to not start wars but you still need a strong army.
To say that money isn't everything is already a luxury
To say that money isn't everything is already a luxury
It's like we've confused a metric (GDP) with success; we maximized the metric and can't even wake up and realize it's not what we were actually trying to accomplish.
I'd argue the best way to accomplish whatever you're thinking about that we should be accomplishing - something that is hard to measure - is by maximizing GDP. Because GDP is correlated with everything you're thinking about accomplishing.