Our politics have been about quantity. Unfortunately, the rest of the model was outsourced to economics. Their focus on atomized human individualism provides an incomplete picture of value, energy and ecology. In other words, how we measure is as important as what we measure. GDP is not wealth gained, it is wealth spent. The higher GDP goes, the more capacity is exhausted, and the less potential remains. In essence, those individuals and nations that have the lowest GDP are richest. In this sense, since resources are constrained, consumption should not only be meritocratic, it should be rationed. Production and distribution must move from utility and marginal preference, to conditional and austere. So not supply and demand, but availability and proportionality.
