Bads, disservices and the gross domestic product
According to mainstream economists, our modern Western economies are made up of enthusiastic consumers and producers of all ages, shapes and creeds, happily consenting to a mutual exchange of goods and services. The more goods and services we consume, the better. Because you see, when a consumer likes a product or service very, very much, they show that appreciation by giving money to the providers of products and services. Eventually, that money becomes something even greater — it turns into GDP. And as is well known among experts, quality of life rises in direct proportion to GDP. Good job everyone!
This is the world we live in. This is growth — nothing but a bunch of people handing each other money in exchange for „goods and services“. But what exactly are goods? What is a service? Let us look at some examples.
Before our world turned digital, goods were characterized by their material, tangible character. A loaf of bread, a pair of shoes, a gun. Nowadays, you could probably include semi-tangible offerings such as video games, ebooks or software tools like photoshop in that list.
Services on the other hand were characterized by their intangibility. Service providers would offer haircuts, cooking lessons or seminars to their customers. Today, there exists a variety of digital services all across the internet. Think of Amazon Web Services, social media sites or platforms like Fiverr.
Good stuff, right? No wonder the GDP is doing so well. And no wonder all of us are doing so well, what with the GDP being at an all-time high and all that.
Oddly enough, this does not seem to be the case. People are suffering from all kinds of physical and mental conditions. Our lives are being disrupted by modern technologies and novel large-scale social experiments. And if the recent surge of off-grid Youtubers is any indication, many of us yearn for a simpler life. Rather than enriching our lives, many of these goods and services seem to deprive people of their vitality.
In fact, it does seem somewhat odd that one would consider the range of high-fructose corn syrup enriched foodstuffs, addictive handheld devices, ecologically questionable SUVs and rubber dragon dildos as goods. They don‘t seem to exert a particularly good influence on their owners. Likewise, is the average Twitch streamer really doing their subscribers a service? The average onlyfans model? What about a teacher during Black History month? Or your typical news media pundit? Are their customers benefiting from these services?
Within mainstream economics, there exists a relatively obscure concept: the economic bad. You read that right. Essentially, it can be considered the opposite of an economic good: something that provides negative utility to consumers. From my experiences at university, economic bads do not get the credit they deserve. Professors may make a fleeting reference in passing, something along the lines of „What a quirky concept! Isn‘t economics fun?“. Popular examples of economic bads include cigarette smoke at a bar or certain foods such as peanuts, which may cause severe allergic reactions for some people.
Considering that we live in a world in which almost every commercial product will have some unintended side effects, this trivialization is entirely out of place. If we were to honestly assess a typical basket of goods for the contemporary Westerner, how many of the products he consumes could really be considered helpful to a happy, meaningful and sustainable way of life?
Industrial food? Loaded with artificial preservatives, coloring agents, sweeteners, xenoestrogens etc. As an added bonus, consider its dependence on petroleum and the destruction of natural environments inherent to industrialized agriculture.
Industrial clothing? Increasingly made out of plastic fabrics (petroleum), produced in dubious 2nd-3rd world conditions, shipped halfway across the world so we can wear it once and discard it. Itches, irritates your skin and smells. Tends to make us look like multi-colored potato sacks.
A crowd favorite — Cars? Providing us with the amazing freedom to enjoy rush-hour traffic and memorable trips to fast food restaurants while completely atrophying our leg musculature. Heavily dependent on fossil fuels across the entire life cycle, big-time contributor to urban sprawl.
These are just a few of the many examples that must be considered economic bads. And while I am not familiar with an existing concept describing services with negative utility, we can observe the exact same tendency. Addictive, soulless entertainment? Check. Internet pornography? Check. Government-sponsored disinformation campaigns? Check. Payday loans without a credit check? Check. These are not services, but disservices.
Bads and disservices — these are the true foundations of our modern economy. A powerful engine running around the clock, not to produce lasting wealth, but a toxic cocktail of short-term satisfaction and long-term misery. This is the machine to which we are supposed to dedicate 50 years of our lives. After all, we would not want our gross domestic product to be any less gross than that of China, would we?
If we are not content with the way our machine is running, maybe it is time for a new one?
