this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Scams improve GDP
I'm not an economist, but this is probably technically true
GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced in a country. A legal scam can hide as a service and get counted.
This is why cars are good for GDP but mass transit isn’t, because a lot more cost goes into a car than a bus on a per rider basis.
The same goes for health insurance. Simply paying a doctor for services is far less GDP than paying an insurance company who then pays the doctor after taking a cut.
Once you realize what GDP measures a lot of what countries do makes sense.
if i burn down your house, the gdp grows, because lot of people now have work rebuilding it.
So what you are saying is that billionarie houses having to be rebuilt after a fire would great for the GDP.
well yes. but they would make the same argument on behalf of their eighth yacht..
A 300MM Ferrari and a 300MM new hospital generate the same GDP.
I remember this discussed in my economics class 20y ago.... Whether housewives work should be in GDP. One would hope economists move forward from there.
Yup. But, that dollar changes hands far more times in the society with higher costs. That's a good thing, assuming costs don't dwarf income
Each time money moves: one trade happened. Someone bought, someone sold something. It's all activity. Money moving around fast: a lot of activity, people getting what they want. Money sitting still: stagnation, no work done, no production etc.
That's the theory. Of course reality is a bit more complicated. People doing volunteer work is often net positive for humanity but won't show up in economic metrics.
There’s also the fact that a lot of those dollars moving are against people’s will or for stupid, inefficient reasons.
If we each paid each other a thousand bucks an hour not to hit each other then that grows GDP without doing anything useful.
Well shit, here's a thou- wait. To not hit me? I dunno, I'll give you, like, 50 bucks.
But think about how much this could be taxed, this looks like zero-sum if you pay the same to me that I pay to you, but it is negative sum for us, and the government benefits from all the shuffling.
Now it looks like another incentive to create inefficient meddling processes with extra steps.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I have held the belief that neoclassic theory of economics is bullshit since I studied it 20 years ago. I'm just explaining that bullshit which is still used to measure things like development, progress etc.
Every time I trim my head I remind myself Im stealing the gdp increase from the state and chuckles..
Of course, I also chuckle when I burn sticks in the spring because Im burning faschists (from the latin word fasces) so my sense of humour is not very high