The lack of visible productivity growth. In particular, it's not as visible as you expect in the GDP statistics.
Take TV Guide, for instance. Now, if anybody watches broadcast television, they can use the internet to find out what's on when. Is that better or worse for users than having a paper TV guide? In many ways it's better. But it shows up in the GDP as a negative, because nobody's buying TV Guide any more.
Or take Google. I can search for any information I want, for free. That creates immense value - immense in every sense except the GDP, where it doesn't show up at all, because it's free.
Wikipedia. Linux. gcc. The Wayback Machine. Even HN. All this is available to us, whenever we want it, for whatever purpose we want, for free. There's great value to us. Just nothing that shows up on the GDP statistics, because it's all free. (Yeah, I know, RedHat sells Linux, and Wikipedia asks for donations. They aren't Microsoft selling Windows and The World Book, though. You can still use them for free, and not get sued or jailed.)
These free things (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) are sustained by a high GDP that translates to high incomes and, in turn, people willing to donate time and money for them to remain free.
Let's try living in a country with a measly GDP per capita of $1,000 (Rwanda for example) and see how many free things we can get..
People give more consistently in more pro-social societies. But those societies are poorer, with lower percentage of computer ownership and programming skills. So they give things like care and food.
Trying to spin the west as the place where altruism is most prevalent seems incorrect. More data needed.
I think we're in agreement here. I never said the West inherently has more altruism. However, the West's high GDP is what enables Westerners to give more to free computing/internet-related projects offering excellent value.
Without a high GDP, there won't be much to give in the first place.
Sure, there's a lot of value. There's also a lot of slops and negative value. These days I don't even use wikipedia that much even though I googled things constantly.
GDP is a very gross measure of things to be sure, but also difficult to fake.
Take TV Guide, for instance. Now, if anybody watches broadcast television, they can use the internet to find out what's on when. Is that better or worse for users than having a paper TV guide? In many ways it's better. But it shows up in the GDP as a negative, because nobody's buying TV Guide any more.
Or take Google. I can search for any information I want, for free. That creates immense value - immense in every sense except the GDP, where it doesn't show up at all, because it's free.
Wikipedia. Linux. gcc. The Wayback Machine. Even HN. All this is available to us, whenever we want it, for whatever purpose we want, for free. There's great value to us. Just nothing that shows up on the GDP statistics, because it's all free. (Yeah, I know, RedHat sells Linux, and Wikipedia asks for donations. They aren't Microsoft selling Windows and The World Book, though. You can still use them for free, and not get sued or jailed.)