From the recent article in the NYT about the G.D.P.:
The question is: How many measures beyond G.D.P. — how many dials on a new dashboard — will you need? Stiglitz and his fellow academics ultimately concluded that assessing a population’s quality of life will require metrics from at least seven categories: health, education, environment, employment, material well-being, interpersonal connectedness and political engagement. They also decided that any nation that was serious about progress should start measuring its “equity” — that is, the distribution of material wealth and other social goods — as well as its economic and environmental sustainability. “Too often, particularly I think in an American context, everybody says, ‘We want policies that reflect our values,’ but nobody says what those values are,” Stiglitz told me. The opportunity to choose a new set of indicators, he added, is tantamount to saying that we should not only have a conversation about recasting G.D.P. We should also, in the aftermath of an extraordinary economic collapse, talk about what the goals of a society really are.
I feel like reading about the "vital core", don't you? The open option suggested by the authors of the "Human Security Now" report fits the necessity of context in order to determine the values to protect. It cannot be done a priori, heavily depending on the people who will live - suffer - the consequences.
However, it is not clear for me the role of the categories. Is not any list arbitrary? Do we need them? Umberto Eco may say yes, but I have my doubts.
Good day!