The Value Trade - Part 1: The GDP Brained
"So, what is it you do for work?"
Of all gods it’s Wealth that compels our deepest reverence — though as yet,
pernicious Cash, you lack your own temple, though we’ve raised
no altars to Sovereign Gold - Juvenal, Sixteen Satires
Near all anyone cares about today is money. It might appear, on the surface, that there are other concerns or priorities, but as it stands, in our modern world, money is the ultimate value. Whether it’s GDP-focused nations, career-centered lifestyles, financially delayed families, or the classic, conversational opener “So, what is it you do for work?”, with regard to our current Geist, one shall discover that if they scratch a virtue, they will find a purchase.
Money, money, money…it’s all anyone really talks about. I’m not sure where this psychological trend started [1], and I don’t intend to outline its origins or the ‘Why’ as to its reality. Still, it is such that within contemporary Western culture, everyone is becoming deeply GDP-brained.
GDP, as many of you will likely know, is an acronym of ‘Gross Domestic Product’, and is classically defined as the standard measure of the value added created through the production of goods and services in a country during a certain period. That being GDP’s contextual, [Read: Economically technical] definition, the floating usage of the acronym throughout Western media has meant that, over time, ‘GDP’ has lent itself to an increased plasticity where its meaning is concerned. Where once the word value—as per GDP’s original definition—was intended as monetary value pertaining to goods and services, in time, the socially entropic overuse of GDP has collapsed ‘monetary value’ into simply value in general
GDP, then, no longer stands for a specific economic marker tied to specific economic factors such as production, goods, and money, but is utilized as a sovereign signifier, denoting value as such. The entire worth, the entire spectrum of worth, of anything, is tied to ‘GDP’. Therein, and henceforth, we conflate the limited, empirical, economic reality of actual GDP measuring with the full breadth of values, plural. To be GDP-brained, then, is to internalize the idea that if GDP is up, things are good, and if GDP is down, things are bad. Of course, the average person isn’t actively tracking the GDP of their nation via an office of statistics, yet they are, however, tracking GDP inadvertently via ceaseless consumption of media. Not a day goes by that various prices, statistics, data, and rates are haphazardly touted by pundits as if they stood in for value itself. Once one has become GDP-brained, house prices being up no longer means that ‘the price of the object that is a house is higher’, but encapsulates a signifier that things are worse now, generally, in some sense, in relation to all values, as it is understood that the floating GDP value stands for, again, value as such.
Of course, if you are GDP-brained, you’re likely already tweaking out reading this piece, screeching various expletives at the screen about How would we work out the worth of something?! or some such, without the use of the GDP-adjacent matrix of stats, etc. That isn’t the point here. The point is that the monetary worth, the monetary value of, well, everything, has usurped value as such. Generally speaking, we unconsciously understand value in general as simply monetary value, and vice versa.
Beginning at the macro-level, even if the happiness, health, trust, or social cohesion of various nations is at an all time low, these (other) values are flippantly cast aside in favour of the GDP-brained mixture of GDP, FTSE-tickers, house prices, food prices, inflation rates, interest rates, tax rates, business rates, exchange rates, rates rates, the monetary cost of money, and, of course, to lighten the banality of it all, the ever-humourous ‘price of a national chocolate bar’ test [2].
Moving down a level to housing, we find that before any discussion of build quality, location, style, local schools, local nature, local amenities, local aura, historical reasoning, or familial/traditional ties, there is a verbal vomit relating to house cost, lawyers fees, broker fees, repayment plans, mortgage rates, and inflation. As if, once all that is nicely tied up (it never is, mortgage people love to chat mortgages), then one will finally be able to get living. As if all values (if they are even extant in the GDP brain) are secondary to the general, ur-value that is money.
Yet, before we can get to living, we need other people to live with. Relatives are, economically speaking, unfortunate in their mandatory nature (Why didn’t Nan plan for retirement! What an embarrasment to us all!), friends tends to gravitate around our own paygrade, and acquaintances can often become like cultural court jesters of different stripes—Poor Jim, rich Steve, well off Larry, frugal Phil, splurging Tim, never-buys-a-round Frank, and of course, who can forget, tight-fisted Ben. Of course, if we are yet to meet someone, it is the modern call of normality to open (after the feigned ‘Hello, nice to meet you’—Is it?) to ask ‘So, what is it you do then?’ And we all know, don’t we, that in asking this question, we’re not asking about hobbies, loves, being a mother or father, creative acts, or ideas that one might feel deeply attached to, no, we are asking about cold, hard cash. What is it that YOU do to MAKE money? Huh, chump!
Oh, but James, isn’t it a tad pretentious to try open conversations expecting anything else? Or, You know, a job is where most people spend most of their time, so isn’t it somewhat right to ask them what they do for work, as that likely is the biggest thing in most people’s lives? Or, Well, a job is how people provide value back to society, so it’s only right to open with such a question? — You GDP fried gooners! I don’t care if it’s pretentious, I don’t care if I’m expecting too much or something different, the truth of the matter is that the value the average person gives back to society via their work amounts to little more than shifting a few emails around, and if that is the biggest thing in their lives then, well, fuck. But hey, now that question is out of the way, we can, together, finally get down to living, right?
Once we move down a level to the ‘get living’ stage, we equally find that anything and everything has been subsumed into the GDP brain. Before anything is spoken of in its depth, be it the physicality of karate, the taste of a meal, the memory of a wine, the feel of a rug, the peace of an apartment, the tales of a trip, the (supposed) fun of a video game, the sound of an album, the heart of a film, the joy a date, or even the love for a pet, first and foremost, the cost is mentioned. Oh, how much does karate cost a month then?… It’s quite a good price for some fish and chips… We got it on offer, 2 for 1 at Tesco’s… I’m not sure it’ll last, but for the price… Rent is £700, not so bad at the moment… It was on sale, too! …Yeah, she’s really sweet, we went to an Italian place I know, it does a 30% off date night…£2000 bill, worth it for our poor Fido, I guess.
Okay, finally, we’re in our nation (GDP is going up!), we’re in our house (We got a great rate!), we’ve got our groceries (Scan the clubcard!), and we’ve settled in for an evening of racking up likes, earning digital gold, or quantifying our mental states onto some spreadsheet app called ‘Calmballs’ or something. GDP-brained, number-go-up, control freak, socially normalised, paranoid, nail-biting, double-checking, panic-setting, bank app notifying, unlifed, life avoiding [3], rose missing, modern bliss! Well, what else is there?! I hear the GDP brain's cry.
You say, "I love you, I miss you", but you think twice before you make a long-distance call. That's why, folks, I always talk about money. That's the thing that reveals where you are really at. - U.G. Krishnamurti
Beauty, honor, tradition, faith, nature, myth, life, vitality, curiosity, creativity, boldness, courage, loyalty, altruism, freedom, compassion, and love. Remember these? These are words, each of which is considered a value. That, if you think back, is a principle, standard of behaviour, worldview, or approach to life that one considers of the utmost importance. And being of the utmost importance, would thus come before anything else, and yet, here we are.
It might seem like there are still those who place other values higher than GDP/money, but it’s a rare occurrence, and is, more often than not, veiled in a rather slippery, self-justifying language. Often, statements that attempt to come to the defence of a value such as beauty or nature, for instance, will be full of those loathsome, get-out-of-responsibility-free cards such as That’s just how the world is…It would be lovely, but…It really is beautiful, but planning is already agreed…We can certainly take a look…We’ll get back to you about that…The forms were required months ago…We didn’t think anyone would mind…Oh, it’s just some old thing…Trees grow back, you know?…We all have to do things we don’t like…The world isn’t perfect.
If, at this juncture, you find yourself thinking something along the lines of: Well, that’s all well and good, but we’ve got to be realistic! This is the world we’re in now! …or, words to this effect, words that veil a felt sense of insecurity, a felt sense that you’re no longer sure what it even means or looks like to live by any other value, then, dear reader, you’ve been utterly GDP-brained. Your mind has been economically flayed to a degree thought unimaginable by the Blairs and Gates of this world; a walking, talking, calculating machine, who on a visit to the Eiffel Tower would estimate the steel price, on a trip to Stonehenge would wonder how much could be made charging an entry fee, and upon the death of a loved one is loathe to admit that the pang of dread upon hearing of their death was not one created out of a love lost, but for fear of having to pay for the funeral.
Do you think the ‘alternative’ to being GDP-brained would be some such opposite equivalent? Goodness gracious, no! How could it be? This is just another form of GDP-brained quantification. These immediate, panicked questions—What (thing) do I do? How do I do it? How often?—are all parts of the same, GDP-brained form, one of control. (Falsely) knowing that GDP up is good and GDP down is bad is tantamount to knowing the exact same thing: you are in control. We looked at the data, and guess what, once again, I’m right! I know! I’m safe! It’s like watching your house burn down and breathing a sigh of relief, having worked out just how many seconds it has left!
One doesn’t even need to read between the lines of the media anymore to see that we are collectively GDP-brained. It is the only value we have and, as such, has become the justification par excellence for anything from construction to morality, destruction to ideology, free speech to deplatforming, or lifestyle to slavery. Money talks, you walk. And, soon enough, we shall see great national swings, grand sweeps, and global overhauls being undertaken not in the name of God, beauty, safety, or even politics, but simply because doing so would make the number go up.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, and each time it stomps, a little floating Boot Market ticker goes up — forever.
[1] Like so many things, it can likely be traced back to the origin and quick popularization of the use of the numeral zero within Western culture, starting around 1600.
[2] Have you seen the price of Freddos!
[3] I can hear the main objection, and it’s not one I’m being wilfully ignorant of. No, I don’t want people to just avoid anything related to money. I don’t give advice — People either agree or disagree with it, and both are as bad responses as each other.
Kuznets, inventor of GDP, said the purpose is not for public welfare. Its supposed to be a wartime production statistic to measure how much man and material can be extracted without causing collapse. Our state's are literally designed to maximize potential output in war. That's why GDP brain is so powerful; the rulers wealth is causally connected to the states ability to conduct war, and thats dependent on GDP.