In mainstream economic jargon, there is a long-established practice of referring to an economy as something analogous to an aircraft or locomotive. It is something that takes off, speeds up, slows down, overheats, and crashes. The central banks of the world are presumably at the controls, and are often reported as pushing and pulling monetary levers in order to control the momentum of the machine. Many economists, including those who stand outside the mainstream, talk of a “dashboard” of economic indicators. The image is one of a console of gauges or dials like those found in the cockpit of an aircraft, and there is much debate among economists and policymakers as to what things should be included on the dashboard. From the socially engaged Buddhist economics perspective, any dashboard would be a collection of indicators that best represent priorities established by the dominant economic institutions. In our current system, ongoing economic growth and wealth accumulation have been clearly established as priorities virtually everywhere. Naturally, the indicators that track this economic growth measured in financialized, market-oriented terms have become a priority.

Economic historian Dirk Philipsen traces the development of national income accounting and the rise of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the paramount indicator—the biggest and most central dial on the dashboard. GDP is a measurement of the market value of all finished goods and services produced and distributed in a country. Its development followed the rise to dominance of corporate capitalism. Philipsen writes, “Anything that could not be turned into a commodity, to be sold at a profit, became a cultural orphan, living precariously on the outskirts of the market.” As the corporate agenda became society’s agenda, the values of the market became the values of society. Buying, selling, financialization, commodification, self interest, and greed all rose in an upward swirl with conspicuous consumption, and in the collective mindset “neither good nor service, neither person nor skill, neither land nor resource, had value unless it was financialized in the market.”

Swept along with the drive to commodify everything is the standard assumption that more money means more happiness. Philipsen continues, “Indeed, the very definition of happiness and misery was increasingly reduced [in economic theory] to a cost-benefit analysis. … The pursuit of happiness shriveled into the pursuit of purchasing power. The many flavors of life vanishing behind the stench of greed.