Comment by dmichulke
9 years ago
A good proxy is market demand. If Apple releases an iPhone and 1bn people buy it they served the needs of at least 1bn people.
Of course, a whole lot of poor people (probably the other 5/6 bn) won't be affected immediately but some years later they also start benefitting and today it's almost a (used) 100$ laptop per child equivalent (except for the poorest).
You can argue the same way about mpesa, bitcoin and other innovations/products.
Do charities have a similarly fantastic metric?
"Market demand" does not optimize globally by default. Effects can be positive or (extremely) negative.
Example: Global warming is a result of the "market", an unexpected consequence from decades of growth. It can only be countered by coordinated action.
To get back to the topic at hand: The "elites" should be the ones who lead such a transformation instead of, say, just looking to advance their carreers.
The "elites" are the ones currently in charge (e.g., climate change, terrorism, monetary policy, ...) and I don't see them optimizing.
Just a few related questions: Who is going to define who are the elites? If you say the people, then we end up in a democracy just like we have already and yet, I cannot see any optimization.
What if climate change can be evaluated not only as a single metric but as a tradeoff? E.g., nuclear energy vs CO2? Or cost of each marginal ton of CO2 saved vs. the things you can do with the same money (e.g. a few cancer therapies). Are there even appropriate "elites" who are experts in all of the above areas?