Hi Erich, sorry for the delay, and thank you for the very careful response. In
order:
Wrt: “… It seems to me like your model assumes that GDP does not have any casual influence on any of these variables,…”
I don’t actually make any such assumption about GDP, and in fact am completely agnostic (for now) about causal dependencies within the graph. I only make the tentative assumption that every variable listed has some causal effect, direct or indirect, on national satisfaction (ergo, it’s not *all* GDP, which is what you accurately quote me as disputing), based on 1) a thorough search being more likely to exclude spurious causes, and 2) expert knowledge. Water, Shelter, Freedom, Friends, Being Accepted — most of these seem pretty unimpeachable. Beyond that I’m actually trying to be especially cautious about proposing particular dependencies because based on my experience with causal systems of even moderate size, the pattern of influences is likely to be spectacularly complicated, and unintuitive. This has certainly been borne out by all of my early explorations with causal discovery tools.
(As an aside, I am very interested in these questions, and continuing to work on them, but my first goal is simply to start with the right set of variables. I think progress on this itself could be a huge improvement over what I currently understand to be the globally accepted standard.)
Wrt “But if you were to find empirically that GDP causes something we do care about, …”
That feels like a reasonably fair description of the arguments with which I’m familiar, but I think there are at least two important nuances. The most simple is that GDP can have not just limited utility, but also horrific externalities — most obvious among them, global warming. It’s essentially your point (2), but with the emphasis that what’s left out can actually be more powerful, and worse, than what’s left in. In other words, even if GDP can cause satisfaction *in the short term,* satisfaction itself actually leaves out the very important question of the future. That’s an inherent shortcoming of the model, but an important strike against the concept. I go into this more in the paper.
The other is that I see “GDP” as practically too vague to be applicable for intervention. You might estimate a causal effect for “GDP,” but that might only be because *one* of the thousand things within the concept actually makes a difference. Then when you go to intervene on a different one of the thousand things, because you identify it is part of “GDP,” you just don’t get the same effect — essentially, because your variables weren’t precisely defined enough. So I’m happy to talk about how economic processes might play critical roles, but I don’t feel comfortable talking about “water” and “the entire economy” as if they have equivalent structural validity. At a minimum, one of them is much more vulnerable to bad accounting practices.
Wrt “But I don’t think OP or anyone else in this comment section is saying that GDP/wealth/money is the only thing that influences life satisfaction,…”
I do agree with you, and agree I misread A. de Vries position. Though, while I don’t think anyone has said explicitly that they think GDP is the *only* cause of satisfaction, there have also been almost no explicit proposals of anything that *does* cause satisfaction, *apart* from GDP — so I may have been reading too much between the lines there, but my trying to get some distance from the concept is really driven by a confusion that it’s the only variable we’re talking about. Still, I could have expressed that more cogently.
Hi Erich, sorry for the delay, and thank you for the very careful response. In
order:
Wrt: “… It seems to me like your model assumes that GDP does not have any casual influence on any of these variables,…”
I don’t actually make any such assumption about GDP, and in fact am completely agnostic (for now) about causal dependencies within the graph. I only make the tentative assumption that every variable listed has some causal effect, direct or indirect, on national satisfaction (ergo, it’s not *all* GDP, which is what you accurately quote me as disputing), based on 1) a thorough search being more likely to exclude spurious causes, and 2) expert knowledge. Water, Shelter, Freedom, Friends, Being Accepted — most of these seem pretty unimpeachable. Beyond that I’m actually trying to be especially cautious about proposing particular dependencies because based on my experience with causal systems of even moderate size, the pattern of influences is likely to be spectacularly complicated, and unintuitive. This has certainly been borne out by all of my early explorations with causal discovery tools.
(As an aside, I am very interested in these questions, and continuing to work on them, but my first goal is simply to start with the right set of variables. I think progress on this itself could be a huge improvement over what I currently understand to be the globally accepted standard.)
Wrt “But if you were to find empirically that GDP causes something we do care about, …”
That feels like a reasonably fair description of the arguments with which I’m familiar, but I think there are at least two important nuances. The most simple is that GDP can have not just limited utility, but also horrific externalities — most obvious among them, global warming. It’s essentially your point (2), but with the emphasis that what’s left out can actually be more powerful, and worse, than what’s left in. In other words, even if GDP can cause satisfaction *in the short term,* satisfaction itself actually leaves out the very important question of the future. That’s an inherent shortcoming of the model, but an important strike against the concept. I go into this more in the paper.
The other is that I see “GDP” as practically too vague to be applicable for intervention. You might estimate a causal effect for “GDP,” but that might only be because *one* of the thousand things within the concept actually makes a difference. Then when you go to intervene on a different one of the thousand things, because you identify it is part of “GDP,” you just don’t get the same effect — essentially, because your variables weren’t precisely defined enough. So I’m happy to talk about how economic processes might play critical roles, but I don’t feel comfortable talking about “water” and “the entire economy” as if they have equivalent structural validity. At a minimum, one of them is much more vulnerable to bad accounting practices.
Wrt “But I don’t think OP or anyone else in this comment section is saying that GDP/wealth/money is the only thing that influences life satisfaction,…”
I do agree with you, and agree I misread A. de Vries position. Though, while I don’t think anyone has said explicitly that they think GDP is the *only* cause of satisfaction, there have also been almost no explicit proposals of anything that *does* cause satisfaction, *apart* from GDP — so I may have been reading too much between the lines there, but my trying to get some distance from the concept is really driven by a confusion that it’s the only variable we’re talking about. Still, I could have expressed that more cogently.