Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T02:54:11.988Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

PROGRESS AND REGRESS: UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX SOCIAL MEASURES AND THEIR TRADE-OFFS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2017

Daniel Austin Green  and
Roberta Q. Herzberg
Daniel Austin Green
Affiliation:
Templeton Religion Trust
Roberta Q. Herzberg
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

What is progress and what is not progress? We can talk about progress in lots of different arenas; we will focus primarily on economic and scientific progress, but also make brief reference to cultural and moral progress. In our discussion, we want to distinguish, especially, between overall, long-term progress and narrower, shorter-term progress or regress. We will refer to these as “global” and “local” progress, respectively. Of course, one can also regress; therefore, we will also look at instances where progress, along some dimension, slows or even moves backwards. Generally, such regress is local, and often still in a context of broader, global progress. In scientific progress, for example, there are many instances of short-term progress which, if not completely discarded or disproved, are at least substantially modified or fundamentally challenged. And yet, those research paths, even when later abandoned, still contributed to the overall progress of the field. In that sense, the regress (that is, rejection or modification of previous theories) is corrected by, but not in conflict with, the overall progress. In the case of economic progress, the concept of regress usually takes on a different form in which things that aren’t advancing progress don’t necessarily stop it, but are simply retarding progress — that is, making the rate of progress less efficient. The consequence, we suggest, is that when talking about economic progress, objections to certain consequences of economic progress (for instance, income inequality — a type of regress, in our terminology) should not be cordoned off and dealt with independently, but should be incorporated into the way we think about economic progress itself — as instances of local regress within a context of global progress. We explore the effects of these different relations between progress and regress to suggest some of the challenges those seeking to broaden the standard measure, GDP, to incorporate other social values of well-being will face moving forward.

Keywords

GDPwell-beingincome inequalityscientific progresseconomic progresseconomic growthvalueeconomic measures
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Winter 2017 , pp. 164 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Ashley, William J., ed. [1909] Library of Economics and Liberty. 13 Feb. 2016. <http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP61.html>>Google Scholar.

2 For example, see von Mises, Ludwig, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc. 2007), 30–71Google Scholar; And Hayek, F. A., “The Subjective Character of the Data of the Social Sciences” in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 13: Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason, Caldwell, Bruce, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 88–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Macklin, Ruth, “Moral Progress,” Ethics 87, no. 4 (1977): 370–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ibid., 373.

5 Ibid., 370.

6 For example, in Radicchi, Fillippo, “Papers Criticized in Comments Have High Scientific Impact” Nature: Scientific Reports 2, Article # 815, (2012). Accessed at <http://www.nature.com/articles/srep00815>>Google Scholar, Radicchi notes that controversy in science is common and can even be beneficial to the scientist. As he argues:

Either resolving in favor or against the scientific findings that originated the disputes, scientific controversies are thought to be necessary for scientific progress. Even if not all the greatest achievements in science have passed through a dispute, as for example the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell, many major steps in science have been controversial. Revolutionary changes are per se controversial because they reverse previous scientific paradigms, and thus necessarily encounter some resistance before getting accepted.

7 Wooton, David, The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (New York: Norton Books, 2015), 4.Google Scholar

8 Ridley, Matt, The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 123.Google Scholar

9 Ridley, Evolution of Everything, 119.

10 Ibid., 121.

11 Ibid., 121.

12 Neuhaus, Richard John, “The Idea of Moral Progress,” First Things (1999), 1–2. available at http://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/08/the-idea-of-moral-progressGoogle Scholar.

13 Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature (New York: Viking, 2001).Google Scholar

14 Kenneth Arrow kicked off an entire field (Social Choice Theory) dedicated to exploring the challenges of a diverse society in reaching social agreement under a reasonable set of conditions. Certainly, when the decision is over issues in the value realm, we can expect even greater problems.

15 Murray, Charles, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, (London: Crown Forum, 2013)Google Scholar.

16 Wooten, Invention of Science, 527.

17 Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation and Liberty Volume 1: Rules and Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation and Liberty Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Coyle, Diana, GDP: A Revised but Affectionate History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).Google Scholar

19 Ibid., “Introduction.”

20 Ibid., 5.

21 The debate between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek was largely a debate about the appropriateness of government intervention to offset economic declines that continues to this day. Over time, the influence of Keynes’ theory led politicians to intervene more frequently and more extensively to offset economic declines.

22 Mises, Human Action, 279.

23 Hayek, F. A., The Pretense of Knowledge, The Market and Other Orders, ed. Calwell, Bruce (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Inc., 2014).Google Scholar

24 Hayek, F. A., “Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 519–20Google Scholar.

25 Thaler, Richard and Sunstein, Cass, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin Books, 2009)Google Scholar.

26 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty.

27 Lukianoff, Greg and Haight, Jonathan, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic (2015)Google Scholar.

28 Natoli, Riccardo and Zuhair, Segu, “Measuring Progress: A Comparison of the GDP, HDI, GS and the RIE,” Social Indicators Research 103, no. 1 (2011): 33–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Verburg, Rudi, “John Stuart Mill’s Political Economy: Educational Means to Moral Progress,” Review of Social Economy LXIV, no. 2 (2006): 225–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Aiyar, Shekhar, Dalgaard, Carl-Johan, and Moav, Omer, Technological Progress and Regress in Pre-industrial Times, Journal of Economic Growth 13, no. 2 (2008): 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Boskin, Michael J., “Economic Measurement: Progress and Challenges,” accessed at http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/papers/pdf/99-15.pdfGoogle Scholar

32 Quoted in D’Acci, Luca, “Measuring Well-Being and Progress,” Social Indicators Research 104, no. 1 (2011): 47–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Bleys, Brent, “Beyond GDP: Classifying Alternative Measures of Progress,” Social Indicators Research 109 (2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean Paul Fitoussi, Report by the Commission on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, 2009.

35 Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, Report by the Commission of Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, 11.

36 Brent Bleys, “Beyond GDP.” Bleys identifies and classifies dozens of the current measures of progress, breaking them down based on their treatment of three major categories — well-being, economic welfare, and sustainability.

37 Mises, Human Action, 33.

38 Neuhaus, “The Idea of Moral Progress,” 2.

39 McCloskey, Deirdre, “Tunzelmann, Schumpeter, and the Hockey Stick” Research Policy 42 (2013): 1706–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Cannan, Edwin, ed. [1904], Library of Economics and Liberty. Retrieved September 3, 2016 from the World Wide Web: http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.htmlGoogle Scholar; and AdamSmith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1790], Library of Economics and Liberty. Retrieved September 3, 2016 from the World Wide Web: http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smMS.html

41 McCloskey, Deirdre and Klamer, Arjo, “One Quarter of GDP is Persuasion,” American Economic Review 85, no. 2 (1995): 191–95Google Scholar.

42 McCloskey, “Tunzelmann, Schumpeter, and the Hockey Stick.”