Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

 hanson@econ.berkeley.edu (Robin Hanson) writes:
>Peter M. writes:
>At 10:47 PM 5/3/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>>This isn't a very good standard,
>>
>> Compared to what? Most alternative ways that people have actually used
>>to describe a singularity are nebulous enough enough that it's hard to
>>tell whether they are falsifiable. ...
>> Yes, a perfect description of what I meant would contain something to
>>limit the effects of large changes in relative quantities of goods.
>> And my standard clearly becomes useless when applied to time periods much
>>longer than a decade.
>
>No need to reinvent the wheel here. Economists have worked out
>sophisticated methods for dealing with these issues, and I presumed that we
>were talking about what the best methods would reveal about the total GDP
>change.

 I'm trying to quantify the change in the average person's ability to
accomplish his goals (where those goals don't conflict with goals of others).
Can you point me to a method of measuring this that doesn't depend on
arbitrary assumptions to create a standard of value that is stable across
turbulent times? (I.e. something that avoid measuring value, or creates
a reasonably objective standard of value that is more stable than, say,
an hour of unskilled labor).

-- 
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