As Technology Kills GDP, What’s Next?

Gross Domestic Product has long been criticized as a flawed measure of the strength of an economy. But as technology topples the core economic assumptions of our society, GDP is rapidly becoming a completely broken metric.

So what should replace GDP as an easily expressed yardstick for our economy and society? How should we measure the economy and its progress on the back of the Internet, on-demand services and the social reputation economy?

Economists and sociologists have floated countless alternative metrics like Gross Output, or the Genuine Progress Indicator. The most creative answer, to my mind, remains Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness concept. That said, I have a different, and somewhat counterintuitive, proposal. I think we should measure energy consumption per capita.