The cancellation of Ontario’s basic income project not only violates our obligation as a society to ensure economic security for all. It also breaches the ethical obligations we have to those participating in research, and underscores the need for a multi-faceted research methodology in designing better income security programs.

The new Conservative government in Ontario led by Doug Ford has cancelled the Ontario Basic Income Pilot—an initiative of the former Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne.

The pilot promised a comparison of those receiving a monthly basic income in test sites in three areas of Ontario with those who did not. The research was aimed at ascertaining “whether a basic income helps people living on low incomes better meet their basic needs and improve their education, housing, employment and health.”

The Liberals put their faith in an evaluation design that approximated a randomized controlled trial. In research like this, a discrete variable (the basic income payment) is received only by those in an “experimental” group, and a comparison is done with a similar “control” group (who do not get the payment) to see if different, and potentially better, outcomes accrue to the experimental group.

My colleague at the University of Manitoba, Prof. Gregory Mason, recently made the made the case that it was time to abandon the project.

He argued that because the basic income pilot encountered several practical problems when setting up its evaluation methods as a more or less “pure” randomized controlled trial, there was scant valid and useful data to be garnered from the project.

Moral, ethical consequences

But, respectfully, I believe that a great deal was lost with the cancellation of the project. The moral and ethical implications of scrapping the program must not be ignored.

Some 4,000 recipients of benefits in the pilot—the members of the “experimental” group—are now without the financial support that was promised to them.

This abrupt and unexpected cancellation of the pilot by the Ford government amounts to a profound moral violation of the responsibility we have towards those who participate in research. This obligation is consistent with, but also goes beyond, the responsibility of narrow ethical research techniques as approved by research ethics boards.

The negative impact on those people has been extensively reported in the media, including in the pilot sites of Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Lindsay.On the campaign trail in the spring of 2018, Ford committed to allowing the three-year basic income pilot run its course. But Ford broke the promise less than two months after he was elected. The cancellation was an act of bad faith on the part of the new government to Ontario voters, and more importantly to the individuals already receiving basic income payments.

While these stories may be anecdotal, they describe real and significant hardships for those who had been promised a chance for a better life. The cancellation of both the pilot project, and of data collection and analysis from the three pilot communities, is a profound failure to uphold an ethical and moral obligation to research participants.

This ethical breach is not the fault of the team of academics and program evaluators who were in place to carry out the research. The blame must be assigned to their new political masters.

More than one tool in research toolkits

Prof. Mason’s argument suggests that the only worthwhile research design for the Ontario basic income pilot was a randomized controlled trial (RCT). But there are several tools in the research methodology toolkit besides a RCT design. Other methods could have been used to gather meaningful and useful data on the Ontario basic income pilot.

For instance, researchers might have amassed systematic data from those receiving a basic income payment in order to better understand the advantages and disadvantages, from the recipients’ point of view, of this new design for income assistance.

Quantitative techniques such as surveys, and qualitative techniques like interviews and focus groups, could have provided in-depth and nuanced evidence directly from the research participants themselves, even in the absence of a control group.

Comparative research could have also been done on the costs and benefits of a basic income payment compared to existing social assistance and disability support benefits using aggregate program, administrative and financial data.

All research methods have advantages and disadvantages. In certain contexts (for example, pharmaceutical testing), RCTs might be seen as the most rigorous and desirable methodology. But when tackling social scientific questions that are inherently complex and in constant flux, RCTs may not only be impractical, they may also have inherent drawbacks.

Alan E. Kazdin is a past president of the American Psychological Association, and (as quoted by Rebecca Clay in 2010) cautions that “overreliance on RCTs means missing out on all sorts of valuable information.” A 2016 study delved into the difficulty of applying the RCT method specifically to economic questions, making the point that “an RCT cannot simply be a matter of simple extrapolation from the experiment to another context.”

We need new approaches

One thing seems clear—the dysfunctional and oppressive nature of our current “last resort” income assistance system makes research into better approaches absolutely imperative.

Not proceeding with the basic income project, and not collecting available data from it, means that we are passing up a golden research opportunity.

Even if it were possible to run a highly rigorous RCT research design in a basic income project, there’s one big problem.

Research subjects in a pilot know that their benefit will cease when the research project ends. The recipients of an actual, operational basic income program, however, would know that there is no end date for the benefit—they will receive it for as long as they’re eligible.

So it would be reasonable to assume that the economic and social choices of basic income recipients (on questions such as employment, education, accommodation and fixed household expenditures) would differ between these two conditions.

Those with long-term assurance that their financial safety net is in place might take more risks and make longer-term plans to improve their economic situations. Thus, extrapolating from a time-limited basic income experiment run as a RCT to a real-world scenario seems an artificial and potentially misleading exercise.

Ways forward

While it’s important to make the case for a variety of methods (beyond just RCTs) in basic income research, this may be a moot point in regard to Ontario’s pilot. Despite national and worldwide dismay that the project is being cancelled, Ford seems committed on ideological grounds to stop the payments and halt the related research.

It can only be hoped that those who have been receiving basic income payments in the project will be given “a lengthy runway” to adjust to their new circumstances. Ontario’s minister of Children, Community and Social Services has given, so far, only a vague commitment that this will be the case.

Hopefully the project’s participants can also continue to tell their stories in the media and to academic researchers. We researchers need to gather evidence in a variety of ways if we are to contribute to the design and delivery of better income security programs.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A rendering of the proposed CalgaryNEXT arena.

The National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames need a new stadium. At least their owners say they do. The 35-year-old Scotiabank Saddledome is perfectly functional, but the team owners’ dream project was CalgaryNEXT, a new Bow-riverside complex home to the Flames and the Canadian Football League’s Stampeders that may also pull in more concert revenue. The proposed multiplex made a compelling pitch until the price tag appeared—$890 million, of which Flames ownership would pitch in just 22 percent. The remainder would come from taxpayers.

Yet even $890 million proved optimistic, as the wildly underestimated price tag inflated to $1.8 billion, with Calgarians assuming two-thirds of the bill. The Flames would also pay no property tax.

An unimpressed municipal government replied with a deal offering a rough 50/50 split in cost with the team paying taxes. Talks quickly broke down when Flames’ ownership opted not to negotiate in good faith, but instead reacted like children denied a new toy. Led by CEO Ken King, the team walked away from negotiations, called in NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to threaten the city, and inappropriately inserted themselves into Calgary’s 2017 mayoral election.

When arena-skeptic Naheed Nenshi was elected to a third term, the Flames’ media relations director tweeted, “Having @nenshi as mayor is worse than @realDonaldTrump being president,” using the hashtags “#arrogant” and “#outoftouch.” Murray Edwards and Clayton Riddell, two of the team’s owners, are worth a combined $4.8 billion. Edwards, Calgary’s second-richest man in 2016, would not have seen a nickel of his tax dollars fund CalgaryNEXT—his legal home is in the United Kingdom.

King’s most recent tactic has been to make the (likely) empty threat of moving the Flames from Calgary, where they have played since 1980. The relocation is improbable. Despite Bettman privately suggesting to Nenshi that the Flames jumping ship could destroy his political career, 75 percent of NHL owners would have to approve the move and open up the logistical mess of reformatting the league’s schedule. One of the most commonly cited possible destinations, Seattle, is now receiving an expansion team, leaving few potential markets offering both Calgary’s size and proven rabid fanbase.

Research from the Washington-based Brookings Institution and others have shown for at least two decades that publicly funding stadiums never works out in taxpayers’ favour—the proposed benefits never materialize anywhere near the extent of making up for costs. Only owners profit. While not new, the debate over taxpayer-funded stadiums has taken an ugly turn in Calgary: Supporters of the NEXT project, like the right-leaning Calgary Sun, have criticized the municipal government for investing in the supposedly wasteful evils of public libraries and bicycle paths. These are services that the majority of Calgarians support and anyone can use, regardless of whether they can afford pricey hockey tickets. The Sun has since deleted the offending article.

All of this could be setting a nasty precedent for Canadian sports cities: that billionaire owners, instead of sitting down to negotiate, can bluff, threaten, and lie to get their way. Historically, Canadian cities have done well in standing up to pro-sport bullying, but the tide is shifting. Quebec City built a $400-million stadium almost entirely with public money to fill a Nordiques-sized hole in their heart, solely in the vain hope of enticing an NHL team back to town. The 2012 renovation of Vancouver’s BC Place also went over budget, up from an initial estimate of $365 million to a final whopping $514 million price tag, all paid for with public cash.

While Calgary has yet to crack under the pressure, the NHL’s Oilers strong-armed the City of Edmonton into paying the majority share of a new arena by threatening to move. Their new rink, whose budget ballooned to $604.5 million, was pitched as part of an urban revitalization project for downtown Edmonton. Dubbed the Ice District, it consists primarily of luxury condos, hotels, and corporate headquarters, and its development is being handled by a real estate company controlled by none other than Oilers owner Daryl Katz.

Taxpayer-funded arenas simply do not benefit taxpayers, as the Calgary saga has shown. But in the face of underhanded tactics and open threats from billionaires denied vanity projects gifted by fans and non-fans alike, the faulty math is worth remembering. Sports franchises, while powerful social institutions and potential sources of civic pride, are simply another form of entertainment. You pay for a film ticket—you don’t subsidize the movie theatre.

Last summer, freelance journalist Katie Jensen shared her 2016 net income with the Twittersphere. “If we knew exactly how much Canadian freelancers, columnists, copywriters, broadcasters, and journalists made,” she wrote, “how revelatory would that be?”

This question resonates with the precariously employed, who don’t benefit from certain protections linked to full-time, permanent jobs. Many have no base incomes, no benefits, and sometimes, no contracts. Without an official guaranteed income for freelance work, being underpaid—or even unpaid—for their work is common.

Ethan Clarke of the Canadian Freelance Union (CFU) says freelancers often don’t think they have any bargaining power and accept a client’s first offer, which is typically low and occasionally nothing at all. The CFU is currently developing tools to help freelancers negotiate, such as common rate sheets and contract templates. “People cannot live on exposure,” he says.

Pay secrecy also adds to the persistent wage gap for marginalized people, including women, people of colour, and those with disabilities. Gender discrimination in the workplace has been illegal for decades, but the stigma around divulging one’s salary allows it to go unnoticed. In a 2015 report, the Government of Ontario encouraged pay transparency policies in both the public and private sectors, but stopped short of legislating it. The Trudeau government has promised new pay equity legislation for federally regulated employers due out this year, but they haven’t said if pay transparency will be required under the new law.

Other jurisdictions are making progress. On January 1, Iceland became the first country to mandate that all employers prove they pay women and men equitably. In England, pay transparency requirements for public and private sector employers brought to light a 50 percent wage gap between two female senior editors at the BBC and their male colleagues with the same title. “One of the key tools that is absolutely necessary to end discriminatory pay is transparency,” says Toronto-based human rights lawyer Fay Faraday. Likewise, until freelancers’ pay is made known, workers have little recourse to demand better pay.

Jensen, meanwhile, stresses that solving the problem isn’t up to one party alone. “If we’re all going to make this industry better, we all have to demand better from everyone,” she says. “There is enough money for everyone, we just have to shuffle it and figure out why there’s such a disparity.”

I used to dream about owning a house someday. Nothing extravagant, just a roof over my head that belongs only to me—a millennial’s dream of a room of my own.

In 2012, that dream was on the horizon. I had finished my education and was living at home with my mother. She owns a modest bungalow in a well-to-do Toronto neighbourhood with a 30-year mortgage and a crumbling foundation, but it belongs entirely to her. My first contract in publishing had just ended, and I was excited about my future prospects. But job offers from future employers never arrived.

In an unfortunate twist of fate, I instead received a phone call from my mother. After years of curious symptoms, her boss had finally sat her down and insisted she see a doctor. She received an MRI, and upon review of the findings, a neurologist immediately sent her to the hospital. My mother was diagnosed with a meningioma, a benign but invasive brain tumour that grows on the membranes around the brain and spinal cord. I stopped applying for jobs and spent the next year at home acting as my mother’s Power of Attorney and caregiver, helping her recover from the craniotomy that removed the fist-sized tumour from her frontal lobe.

My mother was lucky: She worked for the same union for over 30 years and had an incredible employee benefits plan and union representatives who protected her employee rights. She also banked many years of unused sick days and vacation days, giving her almost a full year of paid time off at 100 percent of her salary. As a young adult overwhelmed by my new legal and financial responsibilities, I didn’t recognize what a blessing that this was.

She eventually recovered and was able to return to work with some accommodations. Soon after, I was offered a permanent position with my previous employer, and the office was not too far from home. They offered me a modest but comfortable salary and full benefits; it seemed as though our luck finally turned around. I paid my mother a small amount of rent and put a large portion of my salary into a savings account, dreaming that it might one day be enough for a down payment on a house of my own.

***

In 2014, I began experiencing health issues of my own. I had back pain, which I dismissed as sciatica. So did the ER doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, who refused to do further testing. But by early 2015, the pain was so bad that I couldn’t sit or stand at my desk. I laid on the floor with my laptop in front of me, periodically resting my head on the filthy office carpeting. Concerned colleagues would ask me if I needed help, but there was nothing they could do. Eventually, I put up a sign on my cubicle that said “I have not fallen and I am not dead.” I was so accustomed to pushing through my pain that I didn’t consider sick leave until instructed to by my physiotherapist. When she validated my pain and told me that it was bad enough, I collapsed in her arms and cried.

MRIs later revealed a large disc rupture in my lumbar spine, which was compromising the spinal canal and beginning to cause progressive paralysis in my lower body. I saw a pain specialist, who tried several rounds of cortisone injections but warned me it was only a short-term solution. I had my first spinal surgery in August 2015. I recovered well, and I naively believed that it would be the end of my health troubles.

In 2016, I accepted a new job in trade publishing and moved into my first apartment with my partner. But only a year later, my disc ruptured again while I was on a business trip in Europe. I gulped down muscle relaxants with generous glasses of Prosecco until I got home.

Six months later, I received a second surgery. I lost most of 2017 to pain and brain-melting medications. Over this last year of disability, the nest egg in my savings account dwindled away, replaced by a hefty credit-card bill and shamefully crowdfunded rent donations. I don’t dream about buying my own house anymore.

Ultimately, the burden of research into alternative programs and funding is placed on the individual already dealing with debilitating illness

Canadians often feel smug about our universal health care. We shake our heads at the American system and rehearse the legend of the great Tommy Douglas, “Father of Medicare.” But in this smugness, we forget how terribly recent it all is. Douglas introduced Medicare to Saskatchewan in 1962, preceding the federal government’s first Medical Care Act in 1966. It would take another six years for universal health care to reach all provinces. It wasn’t until 1984 that the federal government established national principles to ensure each province and territory met the requirements of free and universal access to publicly insured health care.

We give our government a break regarding its flaws, because we feel secure in our belief that we are taken care of if something bad happens. But there’s a sinkhole at the intersection of health care and social welfare: Even if you have full-time, stable work, employee health benefits, and a healthy savings account, a long-term illness or injury can take all of that away. And if you are not so privileged, you may fall through the cracks.

***

The first time my health failed, I was fortunate to access private benefits for short-term and longterm disability through my employer. These benefits came with a salary loss of about 30 to 40 percent, but it was still the best possible outcome for someone in my situation. My mother and I swapped roles again, and she became my primary caregiver. I had the privilege of living at home with a strong support system. But, absorbed by my pain, I hadn’t realized things could have been much harder.

This was a lesson I learned the second time I became ill, when my employee benefits did not include short-term disability. I turned to government assistance and discovered just how difficult and demoralizing it is. The Canadian government offers sickness benefits through employment insurance (EI) for those without a private insurance plan. But in order to qualify, you must be eligible for EI. Consequently, EI sickness benefits may exclude those whose health has precluded them from working and those whose work is unstable or insecure.

The benefits are a privilege that many vulnerable citizens cannot access. For those eligible for EI, sickness benefits pay out at a maximum of 55 percent of their regular salary—an unliveable amount for most people—and are only available for a maximum of 15 weeks. If you lose your job, EI employment benefits will pay out for up to 45 weeks, but if you get sick, you’d better hope to recover within a third of that time.

The Unemployment Insurance Act was introduced in 1971. Despite numerous revisions to other forms of benefits, the 15 weeks of coverage for sickness benefits has not changed since its legislation. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) did not respond directly to questions about this discrepancy among different kinds of benefits, but stated that “an evaluation of the EI sickness benefit is underway and is expected to be completed in 2019.” They also emphasized that the EI sickness benefit is a short-term relief for claimants who intend to go back to work.

Herein lies the problem: What happens if you don’t recover in 15 weeks? I asked ESDC for suggestions regarding next steps in such a case, noting that the burden of this research seems to fall on the claimant—there’s no information on the EI website about sickness benefits running out and little human interaction throughout the process. ESDC responded that EI “complements a range of other supports that are available for longer-term illness and disability in Canada, including benefits offered through employer-sponsored group insurance plans, private coverage plans held by individuals, and long-term disability benefits available under the Canada Pension Plan Disability (CPPD) and provincial and territorial programs.”

Apart from CPPD, income-support programs for longterm disability are largely a provincial domain. Individuals whose illness is expected to be long-term are to use these programs, highlighting yet another problem: What if you’re not sick enough? “Long-term” is often defined as a minimum of one year, in even the most generous provinces. The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) requires that your illness be expected to last at least one year; B.C.’s Disability Assistance plan requires that you expect it to last at least two; and Alberta’s Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped program requires that your impairment is expected to be permanent. If you’re sick for longer than 15 weeks but less than one year, like me, you are caught in limbo. I have never been disabled for a consecutive year, but cumulatively I have been disabled for almost two of the past four years. My 15 weeks of EI sickness benefits ran out quickly, but I wouldn’t have met ODSP’s requirements for long-term disability because my doctors couldn’t anticipate the duration of my condition.

My EI sickness benefits ran out one month before my surgery was scheduled in 2017. Fortunately, my employee benefits included long-term disability. It took almost three months to get the paperwork together and for the government to review my application, which was later denied on the basis that my illness was a pre-existing condition. I was told that I did not have the right to appeal this decision, but I did anyway—and I won. During those three months of arbitration, I had zero income and mounting medical bills. I maxed out my drug plan and physio benefits, emptied my savings account, and begged for rent donations from my loved ones. In a culture that values people for their productivity, I felt like a failure.

According to Ontario’s Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS), the governing body of ODSP, individuals who do not qualify for ODSP or who are in the process of applying for it, may be eligible for other social assistance programs, such as Ontario Works. The program covers basic needs—food, clothing, shelter—and may also include drug and medical transportation costs. Likewise, the Government of British Columbia says individuals who are not eligible for their Disability Assistance plan may still be eligible for B.C. Income Assistance. While it’s heartening to know that our government’s social welfare programs provide assistance for those in financial need, there is still a communication failure between our health care and social welfare systems. Ultimately, the burden of research into alternative programs is placed on the individual already dealing with debilitating illness.

***

Toronto’s Alexandra, 26, currently receives ODSP support. At age 18, she was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and social anxiety. She currently receives about $1,150 per month from the provincial program— about 55 to 67 percent of her earnings from when she was able to work. Out of financial desperation, she is trying to earn some additional income from dog-walking, but fears the consequences of reporting this income to ODSP. “All of this extra stress makes my depression worse, which is a vicious cycle because then I can’t work as much as I need to,” she says.

Like Alexandra, many who qualify for disability income assistance find that the funding falls short. The average monthly CPPD benefit is $933.82, based on a monthly fixed amount of $471.43, plus additional funding based on previous CPP fund contributions. ODSP’s monthly allowance is comprised of a “basic needs” amount—$649 for a single adult— and a shelter allowance—a maximum of $479 per month to a single person. In total, we can assume that a single adult with no dependents will receive an average maximum of $1,128 per month from the program. The average cost of a one-bedroom rental apartment in Toronto has hit $2,020 per month, making such an income barely enough to cover housing costs, let alone food, transportation, medications, and therapies. And while it might be tempting to think that people should move to less expensive areas, most urban centres offer far more medical and disability services than smaller communities or rural areas.

As affordable and supportive housing disappears, those sick and with disabilities are left on a slippery slope toward homelessness. To supplement disability benefits, many will have to work to earn more income—a logical fallacy when you consider the lengths they have already gone to prove they cannot work. Setting aside the physical and intellectual challenges of working while dealing with illness or disability, ODSP creates another challenge: You can only earn $200 to spend as you need. After $200, ODSP will reduce your income support by 50 cents for every dollar you earn. So if, for example, you earn a monthly income of $300, your ODSP support will be reduced by $50, and so on. ODSP’s definition of “income” isn’t limited to earnings from work but as any money that you receive. This means ODSP support can be affected by the receipt of other government benefits, child or spousal support. ODSP does offer a $100 per month work-related benefit to help offset the costs of transportation and clothing for work, but any income is still subject to the 50-cent rule. The benefit purports to incentivize recipients to find work and remain employed, but in practice the income rules create more of an obstacle.

***

Income support is not the only financial burden people with disabilities experience. Disability and poverty often go hand-in-hand, making health care a lower priority than basic needs like shelter. This is especially true in a system that does not cover the costs of prescription medications. In fact, Canada has the only universal public health care system that does not include universal prescription drug coverage outside of hospital settings.

Erella Ganon is a Toronto artist with disabilities who currently receives ODSP income support.“I wear two sets of handcuffs,” reads one of her illustrations. “Living with a disability is one. Trying to exist and…hav[ing] a fulfilling life while negotiating the rules for living on a disability pension is another.” One of these rules relates to her medications. While ODSP offers prescription-drug coverage, it only includes medications that appear on the Ontario Drug Benefit Formulary. Ganon requires Solu-Cortef, a brand-name injectable cortisone drug used to treat Addison’s disease, a life-threatening illness, but ODSP won’t pay for it. In March 2017, Ganon says she was taken to an emergency room in Toronto, and the hospital did not have the live-saving medication in stock. Instead, her daughter taxied home to retrieve Ganon’s own stock of the Solu-Cortef, for which she paid out of pocket. Two specialists and her general practitioner have all submitted paperwork to ODSP requesting coverage for Solu-Cortef—and each time she was denied.

When our health care and welfare systems fail to work together, it is those with disabilities who are most seriously disadvantaged

Vanessa, 41, reports similar challenges with the costs of her medications. She received health care coverage from her last employer until it was abruptly cut off in 2010. Vanessa is on a minimum of five antipsychotics, antidepressants, anti-anxiety, and sleeping pills at a time, and she couldn’t qualify for most individual plans because mental illness is considered a preexisting condition. “I finally found a [private] plan that gave me some coverage, and have been paying $200 for health care out of pocket, out of my monthly $1,000 from CPPD,” she says. This leaves Vanessa with $800 per month for living expenses.

Options for prescription-drug coverage vary from province to province. Quebec has a public program that provides insurance for individuals who are ineligible for private drug insurance and for those enrolled in Emploi-Québec’s Social Solidarity Program (the Quebec equivalent of ODSP). But there are obstacles to enrolling in this program: The forms must be filled out by a family doctor, of which Quebec has a major shortage. It is possible to have the paperwork submitted by a GP in a walk-in clinic, but many will not agree to do so—or if they do, they may charge fees of up to $80 per page.

***

In early 2018, I recovered from my second surgery and I gradually returned to full-time work. I can now walk without assistive devices, I have weaned off opioids, and I appear able-bodied. I know that I am lucky to have a job to return to, but I’m acutely aware of the lost time. In some ways I feel like a time traveller stuck in the past; my version of 2017 ended in April, and I’m struggling to find my place in this new year.

Fiscal conservatives may argue that we should be grateful for the health care systems we have in place, that we should pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and stop relying on social welfare at taxpayers’ expense. But if our system is one that only patches people up at the expense of their financial ruin, how dare we act smug while we deny basic standards of living and care to those who are most vulnerable? When our health care and welfare systems fail to work together, it is those with disabilities who are most seriously disadvantaged. And in this inescapable cycle of disability and poverty, we are robbed of the contributions of citizens who are just as worthy, valuable, and loved as the able-bodied.

CORRECTION (04/24/2018): A previous version of this story misstated Erella Ganon’s medical condition, as well as the circumstances around her March 2017 hospital visit. The piece has now been updated. This regrets the errors.

In the 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland, Alice was trying to find a party when she fell down the rabbit hole. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that this has become the favourite cliché for people struggling to explain what it’s like to enter the disorienting world of Bitcoin.

We’ve all heard stories about the mad crypto-party, and we’ve likely heard them from a glint-eyed friend, urgently trying to communicate why Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency, and its underlying blockchain technology are so important.

Bitcoin is digital money that solves the problems of reproducibility and security. You can’t copy-paste coins, save multiple versions, or make counterfeits. It’s generated by a computer program, not a government-backed bank. The program gives out bitcoins to people as a reward for using their computer processing power to solve the difficult math problems, or cryptography, that make Bitcoin virtually impossible to hack. The more secure Bitcoin is, the more people use it; the more valuable it is, the more incentive there is to secure it. Eventually, the computer program will stop generating new bitcoins. The finite supply is one reason why it has become so expensive, like gold. By all accounts, Bitcoin breeds obsession. And if you do find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole of hype, you’ll quickly get the terrible feeling that what the rabbit told Alice was right: “I’m late.”

Consider the following: If you invested $100 in Bitcoin on June 1, 2011, the day gossip blog Gawker made the then-still-infant cryptocurrency semi-famous with its article on Silk Road—the notorious dark-web marketplace where early adopters could use their bitcoins, albeit mostly for drugs—your investment would be worth nearly $85,000 USD (at the time of writing). If you got in a year earlier, it would be $17 million. Feel that pang in your chest? It’s called “Fear of Missing Out,” and a great many people have been experiencing it. Binance, the world’s most active cryptocurrency exchange, is adding as many as 240,000 new users an hour.

The cryptocurrency market is frequently compared to the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s that eventually burst. The analogy has some merit, but blowing off cryptocurrency entirely because the market is overheated would be like rejecting the internet because a few hare-brained websites didn’t make any money back when people were still figuring out how to use email. The current speculative frenzy will thrill some and repel others. But the problem isn’t that it engenders greed or attracts scams. Instead, fevered speculation is obscuring and possibly hindering the true potential of blockchain technology to shift the balance of power from large institutions to individuals across many sectors of society.

***

My experience falling down the blockchain rabbit hole for the first time in mid-December 2017 was an anxious, emotionally exhausting affair. I decided to buy a few hundred dollars’ worth of bitcoins and leave it at that—not a big bet, but at least I’d catch a draft if the price kept skyrocketing, as it had started to do in November. (The price has since experienced what investors call a “massive correction,” falling all the way back down to where it was then.) A few hours after the initial purchase, I invested more. Within a day, I had shoved an uncomfortable chunk of my savings into the digital currency. Retirement solved.

Anyone who’s sampled the chaotic crypto-markets knows what came next: “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt,” or FUD in the vernacular of the movement. I encountered a lot of bearish voices, all of them huffing and puffing about the bubble. The price of Bitcoin is floating on hot air, they growled. It could pop at any minute. So in a panic, I sold it all.

Even with the accumulated value of my labour restored safely to Canadian dollars, I was already deep into Wonderland, for better or worse. I wanted to know more, but so-called crypto experts online just made me uncertain and confused.

I needed someone sensible to show me around. Jessie Cortes is a 33-year-old Toronto-based “crypto-consultant” who’s been day-trading cryptocurrencies full-time since last summer. When we meet in early January, Cortes wears a crisp haircut and stylish wireframe glasses. He gently shuts his chrome MacBook as we begin to talk, but he keeps an eye on the steady stream of messages pinging on his phone, from fellow “scalpers” (those who buy and sell on a minute-by-minute basis) on crypto forums and online discussion groups. He absorbs these updates seamlessly while he overviews the crypto-landscape and the various ways to profit. “I help people find ways to make money in this game,” he explains.

To most people, cryptocurrencies still seem like a forbidding fringe technology, but early adopters like Cortes are now well-established and ready for business. A new generation of entrepreneurs is emerging, and they’re all trying to catch the wave of mainstream adoption before it crests. “The goal right now is just to get as many people as possible to participate and understand what’s going on,” says Cortes.

Cortes will set you up with a wallet and an exchange, teach you different trading styles, offer tips and advice about the ecosystem, or help you code a bot to do it all automatically. He’ll even help you set up a miniature mining operation on a spare computer, through which you can earn a couple bucks a day. Mining, or “proof-of-work,” is one of the key tools that makes blockchain technology effective. The blockchain is an unchangeable record of transactions within a network. Usually it’s referred to as an immutable ledger. The ledger is distributed across the network, so it’s public—like a spreadsheet that everyone can see. Everyone can add to the spreadsheet by making a transaction, such as sending bitcoins, but no one can change an entry once it’s been made (not even the person who made it). Mining is the process whereby participants in the network are incentivized to secure the ledger. Miners are paid in bitcoins to make Bitcoin safe.

If you remove all the steps, you could say that blockchain mining turns electricity into currency. That’s why large-scale mining operations have attached themselves to coal plants in China, and Quebec is trying to sell off its excess hydro energy to crypto miners. Cortes helps individuals join mining pools, which amalgamate their collective computing power and divide the profits among their members.

But don’t try to hire Cortes to manage your portfolio; he’s not interested. The whole point is that people are individually engaged and empowered to do what they want with their currency, he says. “You have to look at yourself as a bank.”

That’s not a metaphor. What is a bank if not a place that holds your money? If you want to move your money somewhere—to a family member in another country, to a portfolio manager, or to your own purse from an ATM—you have to ask the bank, and they might charge a fee for their trouble. But blockchain technology obviates the need for a bank—you can hold onto your money yourself with perfect security, and send it to whoever you want without asking.

You have every reason to be skeptical when you hear a promise of perfect digital security, but that’s because until now, data was always kept in centralized servers surrounded by firewalls. If the data is valuable enough, it’s basically inevitable that some hacker will find a way in, as countless breaches— from credit reporting agency Equifax’s massive leak of information for 143 million people, to a Yahoo breach affecting three billion accounts—have proven.

The blockchain doesn’t keep the transaction data on a particular set of servers that hackers might gain access to. Instead, it decentralizes the record of transactions, storing it everywhere for all to see while keeping your identity and your crypto-wallet safe. Even if a hacker managed to perform the virtually impossible task of unravelling the cryptography to change one instance of the ledger, such that someone else’s bitcoins transferred to their own wallet rather than the intended wallet, they’d still have to perform the same feat on all the other versions of the ledger, all at the same time. Instead of robbing the bank’s vault, they’d have to rob every house at once. People who believe in cryptocurrencies are those who accept the principle that blockchains are so secure, they extinguish the need to trust powerful institutions to keep the books.

Maybe that doesn’t sound fun. For Cortes, it is. He possesses the two necessary attributes to excel at crypto-trading: a do-it-yourself approach to tech and a gambler’s flair for risk. He uses apps and games to play around with stocks, though primarily with fake money. But he’s also into online gambling, and as an amateur boxer, he likes to bet on matches. Through his 20s, Cortes made his income independently as a DJ and Airbnb host. Now he lives inside the crypto-universe, reading whitepapers about new alternative currencies, scanning for tips on different forums, and watching the price charts rise and fall. It’s profitable, but it’s also a full-time job. The price of agency is effort.

***

The blockchain revolution isn’t about how we exchange money, but how we exchange value. So-called tokenized ecosystems may be the new marketplaces for personal goods and resources—such as the spare storage space on your laptop, or even your time, energy, thoughts, and attention. Is your art valuable? Or the energy from the solar panel on your roof? Tokenized ecosystems are the decentralized networks that will enable people to trade independently on the value they create.

Consider Steemit, a decentralized social network that runs on blockchain software. Steemit rewards people for contributing and curating content by paying them with its own digital assets, some of which are then spent on other creators within the ecosystem as tips, and some which can be traded for other currencies.

At the time of publication, one Steem Dollar was valued at $3.84 USD, and some people are getting better returns for their posts than many online publishers pay for articles. Steemit generates a system of value for people who invest in the network through their effort and talents, and that system touches other systems of value, like Bitcoin or dollars, or a token from another ecosystem.

For the true believer, these blockchain-based decentralized apps—ones with their own tokenized ecosystems—will soon overtake and replace the apps we currently use to relate to each other online.

Will Salmon is a self-described “blockchain evangelist.” A slender man in his forties with thick facial stubble, he runs a meet-up six days a week at 7:30 a.m. at the Depanneur Café in Montreal. The group is spiritedly titled, “Blockchain Coffee: Be the Change You Wish to See in The World,” and it’s meant to be a welcoming spot for newbies trying to make sense of the tech. The curious should seek out the tennis ball-sized globe perched on a saucer, with the words “collective brain” scrawled in sharpie over the Pacific Ocean. There you’ll find Salmon, scribbling in a thick notebook and ready to explain everything in his strong Parisian accent.

Salmon used to work for an accounting software company in Ireland, where he had the opportunity to study blockchain as a potential solution early on. After researching the technology at length, he was convinced that it would bring massive disruption to society. So, four years ago, he took a leap of faith. He quit his job and devoted himself full-time to the revolution. “For me, it’s the beginning of the 21st century,” he says.

But Salmon is anxious about the way that blockchain tech has inspired a gambling culture. When he first began educating people about the tech, few even knew what it was, and those who’d heard of Bitcoin were mostly skeptical. Now, he says that the old men in his neighbourhood talk to him about alternative cryptocurrencies like they’re discussing race horses. Salmon realized that he didn’t want to obsess about prices or treat the blockchain like a get-rich-quick scheme, so he sold all of his bitcoins a few years ago.

Bitcoin has made plenty of early investors into millionaires, but today Salmon freely admits that he’s broke, though he prefers to say that he has “the luxury to think about money outside the box.” When he’s not organizing meet-ups, he’s working at the Depanneur Café.

While people like Cortes make blockchain enthusiasm look suave, Salmon plays the part of the Mad Hatter. In conversation, he stitches together futurist postulations and blockchain hypotheses with dizzying speed. Instead of hustling on the cryptocurrency exchanges, Salmon focuses on networking within Montreal’s crypto community as he searches for other true believers who share his long-term outlook. It’s not this wave of blockchain adoption Salmon wants to catch, the one that’s supposed to do to banks what email did to fax machines; it’s the next wave he’s watching, when decentralized apps take over everything else.

For example, Salmon is anticipating the day when autonomous cars relieve traffic congestion, liberating the streets for more public use. Into this imminent future Salmon wants to launch a tokenized ecosystem called Fitcoin, similar to an initiative founded in Austin, Texas. Just as Bitcoin rewards miners with bitcoins and Steemit rewards engaged community members with steem, Salmon wants the city of Montreal to reward people with Fitcoins to, say, use public bike transit. These Fitcoins could then be redeemed for city services, like at the library, or traded for other cryptocurrency. Salmon believes tokenized ecosystems enable win-win scenarios, where people are incentivized to be healthier and the burden on health care is thus diminished.

If this or similar schemes ever come into effect, life will feel a lot more like a video game, with everyone speeding around picking up coins. But what about people with different abilities? Will Fitcoin adjust its parameters for those in motorized wheelchairs, or will they excel in some other tokenized ecosystem? Needless to say, there isn’t a cryptoutopia ahead.

The blockchain isn’t a panacea, but it could redefine ownership. Your bike to work would be yours in a whole new way if you could buy something with it.

***

Whether Salmon ever manages to convince the city to invest in his vision, others are looking to blockchain technology to solve even bigger problems. Laurent Lamothe was the prime minister of Haiti from May 2012 to December 2014, while the country was still recovering from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck near the nation’s capital Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. He’d just returned to his home in Florida the night before the earthquake struck, and he watched the images of the devastation on TV along with the rest of the world.

“I lost a lot of family members and friends,” he told me over video chat, pacing around his sunny Miami home. “A quarter of a million people passed away. It was the most difficult experience of my life, seeing the tragedies and horror stories from every single family in the country.”

One year after the earthquake, popular Haitian performer Michel Martelly was elected president and named Lamothe his adviser, making him responsible for the reconstruction effort. Lamothe’s responsibilities included helping coordinate the international aid effort and collaborating with groups like the American Red Cross, which had received nearly half a billion dollars in donations earmarked for Haiti, more than any other organization. But reporting in 2015 by ProPublica and NPR suggested that very little of that money went to directly helping Haitians. For example, the Red Cross had promised to house 130,000, but five years later, only six permanent homes had been built. (The Red Cross disputes this reporting, and points to investments in hospitals and a wastewater treatment plant as some examples of how that money has made an impact.)

Although Lamothe has publicly praised the Red Cross’s efforts in Haiti, he also criticizes aid organization’s lack of transparency during the crisis: “When we said we wanted to know [where their funds were to be spent], to discuss it and have shared priorities, they told us that everything was spent. But that did not translate into the streets. We didn’t really see anything that happened with that money.”

The same year the Red Cross’s work in Haiti was exposed to public scrutiny, Lamothe learned that blockchain technology could solve some of Haiti’s most pressing problems. Lamothe first heard about the blockchain at a special conference hosted by Richard Branson, Virgin’s grinning CEO, on his private island. “That’s when I discovered the power of the blockchain and its potential to change the world as we know it,” he says.

Take international aid. A new platform called Alice uses blockchain technology to help charities and social enterprises operate transparently. With a secure decentralized ledger, it becomes possible to publicly track where every donation goes and how every dollar is spent. But that’s not the only way that blockchain tech could help Haiti and countries like it.

Buying and selling property in Haiti can be hopelessly complex. One of the challenges that hampered the Red Cross’s efforts was the country’s dysfunctional land title system. Haiti’s National Land Registry Office has only registered a tiny fraction of the country’s more than 17,200 square kilometres, while other agencies keep their own separate records. Land disputes have interfered with and ultimately defeated many reconstruction and development projects. After the earthquake, the situation was even worse. “Everything was lost,” says Lamothe. “All the records were held in a single office, and that office collapsed.” Blockchain technology offers a secure, paperless method of recording property transactions that virtually eliminates the possibility of dispute. Sweden and Russia are already in the advanced stages of implementing land registry systems on their own private blockchains.

Lamothe is advocating for blockchain solutions in other areas of governance as well. He believes blockchain technology could bring much-needed transparency and accessibility to elections, and platforms like Follow My Vote and Polys have already launched blockchain applications to disrupt this space. Whether it’s voting, financial inclusion, or charitable donations, Lamothe hopes that blockchain developers will turn their gaze to Haiti as “a good test case.”

***

When Alice finally found the mad tea party in Wonderland, she couldn’t understand what anyone was talking about. The world of blockchain tech can feel equally baffling, but one can always find a candid perspective among those who are basing their approach on betting odds. “It’s the purest democracy,” says Cortes. “Wouldn’t you want to invest $500 or $1,000 in that and see how it goes?”

“You can mine for gold, but you can sell pickaxes.”
-Anonymous

One of the biggest fortunes made in the Californian gold rush of the nineteenth century was that of Levi Strauss, who made his money selling everything from tents and buckets to the denim pants that still bear his name. He got paid whether his customers found gold or not. All retailers make money whether we find happiness in the products they sell us or not. Indeed, the longer people search for gold, or happiness, the more pants and other stuff Mr. Strauss and other retailers can sell them.

Affluenza has fuelled a massively inefficient search for happiness. Rather than dig through the earth in search of gold, or dig through Keynes’ rubbish dump looking for bottles of money, modern capitalism relies on billions of people searching for new products that will fill the hole in their lives that was briefly plugged by the last purchase. The banks, the manufacturers, the advertisers and the retailers all make their fortune by selling us the dream that ‘there’s happiness in them there hills’. Of course, the last thing retailers want is for us actually to find it.

As we have seen, poorly understood economic indicators such as GDP help to ensure the global debate about building strong economies focuses on the flawed idea that the amount of economic activity is in some way a proxy for the rate of economic or social progress. In fact, the empirical link between growth in the size of an economy and human happiness is very weak – some would say non-existent. This should come as no surprise. Consider the following:

• No shareholder would be impressed to learn that their company was spending lots of time and money having meetings with itself, even if the meetings required a lot of expensive travel that necessitated new teams of people dedicated to booking that travel.

• No parent would be impressed to find that their child had spent hours moving the mess from one side of their bedroom to the other.

• No government would be pleased to have riots and vandalism, even if they caused a boom in the local window repair, painting and construction industries.

So why are politicians and business leaders impressed when told that GDP has grown because of a spike in the consumption of imported appliances and bottled water (otherwise known as ‘strong retail sales figures’)?

The answer is both simple and cynical. Wasting natural resources to produce stuff that will soon be thrown away doesn’t generate true national wealth, but it does generate enormous wealth for some people in the supply chain. That’s all it does, and that wealth creation is naturally very, very important to those people. But to suggest that borrowing money from overseas to buy things that were made overseas – things that are quickly thrown out and buried in local landfill – plays an important role in making a national economy strong is simply absurd.

It is hard to believe that all the rowing machines that accumulate in the spare rooms of the nation might be seen as an indicator of wealth or progress. But, as enormous amounts of energy, natural resources and human labour are wasted on making products that are never used, or that are designed to fall apart, what have the economists and politicians had to say about this consumerism-induced waste? Almost nothing, except for implicit praise. Indeed, rather than highlight the economic and environmental harm of such waste, an enormous number of economists and politicians have spent decades trying to shift the rules of global trade, and the norms of ‘sensible economic policy’, to generate more such waste.

The term ‘Washington Consensus’ has often been used to summarise the fundamental tenets of the neoliberal agenda at the global level. According to its adherents, who have shrunk in visibility if not number since Donald Trump was elected and the UK supported Brexit, the way to increase the efficiency of an economy is:

• To cut tax rates for wealthy citizens, allowing them to spend more money on consumer goods;

• To cut taxes on businesses, allowing them to appropriate a larger share of national income, on the promise that they will invest some of the proceeds into the production of more stuff;

• To cut spending on the labour-intensive community services used most heavily by low-income earners (such as public schools, hospitals and public transport), on the basis that such activity is inefficient and crowds out more efficient private-sector activity;
• To cut the wages of low-income earners, who spend the smallest proportion of their income on the disposable consumer goods that have the highest profit margins;

• To reduce protections for workers, consumers and the environment, so as to increase producer profits; and

• To increase trade with developing countries whose environmental, labour and consumer protections are much lower to help reduce such standards in developed countries.

While there is no doubt that there are times when lowering trade barriers can lead to an increase in the quality of life of some people in some countries, there is also no doubt that far more effort has been expended by groups such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on trying to reduce trade barriers than on trying to reduce water pollution and income inequality – which have also been shown to improve economic performance and human wellbeing.

Once we draw a distinction between whether an activity will create wealth for a producer and whether it will create wellbeing for a community, it becomes much easier to decode the flood of econobabble used to justify the obsession among advocates of the Washington Consensus for lower taxes and less regulation rather than for reduced tax evasion and more environmental regulation. While it is possible for the owners of multinational companies to profit from poor labour and environmental standards in low-income countries that export stuff to rich countries, it is far harder for rich people in rich countries to benefit from an improvement in the standard of living of workers in those developing countries.

Economists have always been aware of the difference between the amount of stuff a nation consumes and the wellbeing of its citizens. The question we must ask is not ‘Why don’t the economists get it?’ but ‘Why don’t the economists say much about it?’

A cynical answer to that question is that most economists operate on the assumption that the customer is always right. So when the IMF and the World Bank offer to pay economists to explain the benefits of using borrowed money to buy new stuff, most of them are happy to take the money. On the other hand, many economists have highlighted the problems with placing the pursuit of GDP ahead of the pursuit of community wellbeing, but such economists are far less likely to be asked to give keynote addresses at the most ‘prestigious’ events. Culture shapes not just economics, but the economists anointed to explain economics to the populace.

***

If millions of people voluntarily gave up buying bottled water tomorrow and instead donated the money they saved to medical research, there would be no reduction in GDP, but there would be a devastating impact on those who profit from the sale of bottled water. There would also be a surge of new jobs in medical research. Given how few people are employed to fill a bottle with water and how labour-intensive research is, there would likely even be an increase in overall employment.

Similarly, if a tax was imposed on the sugary drinks that cause so much ill health, and the tax revenue used to fund a labour-intensive program such as active playgroups for kids, supporters of small government would likely scream about the inefficiency of a program that improved health and created jobs at no net cost to the budget.

It’s not the size of government that is a key concern for many conservatives, but the size of the private sector’s profit margin. When we spend $100 on pie makers and table-top electric wine chillers, the majority of the money goes as profit to the owners of the various parts of the supply chain, but when we spend $100 on a publicly funded teacher, nurse or aged-care worker, there is little or no profit margin to be sliced off. That’s why the proponents of small government who rage against excessive spending on public health care usually don’t mind huge public expenditure on aircraft carriers and fighter jets. They know the military hardware will be built by the private sector and that the manufacturers, like Levi Strauss, will make their profits whether or not the ships, jets and weapons are ever used. The shape of our economy doesn’t just determine how much harm is done to the environment, it helps determine how much profit will be collected by the owners of the supply chain. One thing that manufacturers, retailers, advertisers and transport companies can agree on is that none of them make a buck out of higher taxes being used to fund better quality high schools.

While choosing which activities do most to improve community wellbeing will always be controversial, identifying the economic consequences of such choices is quite straightforward. For example, if consumers shifted away from buying lots of stuff towards buying lots of services, it would have a huge impact on the shape of the economy but almost no impact on its size. And if citizens switched their spending away from stuff they didn’t need and towards services that governments provide efficiently – health care, education, public transport, bigger parks and more museums – there would be no reduction in the size of GDP, but there would be a significant reduction in the amount of profit earned in the economy (the profit margin on $1000 worth of publicly provided childcare is a lot smaller than the profit margin on $1000 worth of branded merchandise . . . but there are more jobs created per dollar spent on childcare than for each dollar spent on handbags and sunglasses).

A shift away from privately provided stuff towards publicly provided services would also lead to much lower consumption of natural resources. Yet as long as people get the same or more satisfaction from high-quality public services as they do from foot spas they don’t use and food they throw away, this shift would have no adverse impact on the happiness of citizens. Indeed, people would likely be happier.

Excerpted from Curing Affluenza: How to Buy Less Stuff and Save the World by Richard Denniss. Published by Between the Lines ISBN #9781771133678. Purchase the book online today.

Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau pose on budget day in 2016. Photo courtesy of CBC.

Trudeau’s majority win in 2015 promised many things, among them a strong economy and a happy middle class. Early on he revealed the party’s plans to run a “modest short-term” deficit of no more than $10 billion a year to achieve this, and hit the ground running with campaign promises of better infrastructure, innovation spending, and greener communities. Citing the need to jump-start the economy with these investments, the Liberals vowed to balance the budget by 2019–20.

On March 22, Finance Minister Bill Morneau blew through that promise in the 2017 federal budget, announcing a planned deficit of approximately $28.5 billion in the coming year, set to decline “gradually” to $18.8 billion in 2021–22. Long-term fiscal projections are now anticipating deficits until 2050, leaving Canadians wondering how the government ever plans to get back on track.

While Trudeau’s plans were praised by International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde last year, a number this large is atypical. Governments may run large deficits to stimulate a struggling economy. But despite some quarters that have experienced slower growth, the Canadian economy is currently growing. That means if there’s a sudden downturn, the Trudeau administration would have to plunge even further into the red.

In keeping in line with his campaign promises, Trudeau also promised in the C-44 budget bill to spend $187 billion on infrastructure over 12 years, including a $35 billion Infrastructure Bank. The bank would include the private sector to provide low-cost financing for new projects—a possible way to boost the economy and get much-needed transit projects off the ground. There are high expectations for the results of such spending, and success will largely depend on execution and choosing the right projects.

Trudeau was forced to push himself out of the worst economic decade since the Second World War, and after a sluggish start, Canada’s economy has indeed picked up. It grew by more than two percent in the last quarter, while unemployment in July hit 6.3 percent—the lowest level since the October 2008 recession.

But few of these happy stats may be attributed to Trudeau’s planning.

Much growth in Canada is rooted in consumer spending, which has picked up the slack from declining growth from the resource sector. Low interest rates have allowed consumers to carry the economy for a while, but have also let them rack up a fair bit of debt—making Canadians increasingly vulnerable to sudden rate hikes. On the bright side, Trudeau has set aside $6.6 billion to support skills and innovation, and has been pushing for a European Union free trade deal (spearheaded by the Harper government) to help improve exports.

For some, the irony of the 2015 anti-Trudeau campaign smear that our PM thinks “the budget will balance itself” is sinking in. Meanwhile, other Canadians are basking in the current steady economic climate—whether Trudeau is to thank for that or not. Ottawa hasn’t been shy throughout their planning phase and over the next two years Canadians will watch as they juggle their multiple projects in the air, waiting for results and all the while hoping against hope that we aren’t forced to send the bland old economist back in.

Grade: B

But happiness day wasn’t just about getting your grin on. The idea is to recognize happiness and well-being as valuable measures of growth.

Most of the world measures growth and development through gross domestic product, where increase in GDP means progress. The problem is a lot of terrible things inflate GDP. Like oil spills and wars.

As the prime minister of Bhutan, Jigme Thinley, said:

Economic growth is mistakenly seen as synonymous with well-being. The faster we cut down forests and haul in fish stocks to extinction, the more GDP grows. Even crime, war, sickness and natural disasters make GDP grow, simply because these ills cause money to be spent … We need to rethink our entire growth-based economy so that we can thrive more effectively on our own resources in harmony with nature. We do not need to accept as inevitable a world of impending climate chaos and financial collapse.

In Bhutan, a small country on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, happiness defines progress. It’s the only country where gross national happiness (GNH) replaces GDP. Bhutan’s happiness index measures factors such as cultural preservation, environmental quality, physical and psychological health, and good governance. These values are entrenched in the country’s policies with mandates that require the country to be carbon neutral and leave 60 percent of the land covered in forest. School enrollment for Bhutanese children is 100 percent, and export logging is banned.

The idea is to reduce needs to match the available resources; to strive for happiness rather than material gains. But when you’re constantly trying to maximize your resources—a la Western capitalism—your needs (or wants) increase in parallel. To fulfill our insatiable neediness, we increase our goods and services. This is what we call “growing the economy”.

For years, renegade economists have challenged this type of progress. Jeff Rubin, among others, predicted an “end of growth” economy and called for a “holistic” economic approach that factors in well-being. These economists were mostly ignored until the stock markets crashed and natural disasters became a first world problem. Clearly we’re doing something wrong.

So last April, the UN discussed “new economic paradigm” inspired by Bhutan’s gross national happiness initiative. Three months later, the UN declared March 20 International Day of Happiness, recognizing the importance of well-being in public policy.

The trouble is: how do we measure happiness? Subjective happiness is easy. Just measure someone’s general life satisfaction through surveys and questionnaires. The trickier measure, objective happiness, looks at more universal ideals presumably linked to well-being, like health levels, crime rates, literacy and life expectancy.

There’s no consensus on how policy-makers can apply well-being scores to economics or even how being happier can help the economy. The good news is people are talking about it—reminding each other that happiness is really the only important thing in life. And not just happiness for ourselves but for other people and future generations.

Day 14 of the Occupy Wall Street protest. Photo by David Shankbone.

[Note: this editorial appears in the November-December 2011 edition of This Magazine, which will be on newsstands and in subscribers’ mailboxes in early November.] 

Looking back on autumn 2011, it seems increasingly clear that the movement known as “Occupy Wall Street” will be viewed as a genuinely important historical moment for the West. The idea, first floated by the contemporary masters of agitprop Adbusters in July, quickly developed a life of its own, attracting thousands of people to a makeshift encampment in New York’s Liberty Square. They came for a variety of reasons, but their slogan was, and is, a simple and powerful fact: “We are the 99 percent.” As in: regardless of political affiliation, personal attributes, or occupation (or lack thereof), we are united by our opposition to the predatory economic behaviour of the top-earning one percent.

The “Occupy” meme spread quickly, with new demonstrations popping up across the United States and Canada. The language explicitly drew parallels with the Arab Spring revolutions still roiling the Middle East; the selection of Liberty Square, an echo of Egypt’s Tahrir, or Liberation Square, was no accident. (It should be noted that some fairly objected to the militarist and colonialist overtones of “occupying” anything.) This being the internet age, variants and jokes swarmed around the event too, with “Occupy Sesame Street” casting the Muppets as revolutionaries, and “Occupy Occupy Wall Street” satirically imagining hedge fund managers and investment bankers sitting in on the sit-in.

Many observers, particularly reporters from larger media outlets, were either openly scornful or simply missed the point. They got their footage of some “anarchists”—one of the laziest catchalls in contemporary journalism—looking angry or shouting slogans, and spoke in ominous tones about arrests and scuffles with the police, frequently omitting the fact that the police were the aggressors.

In fairness, Occupy Wall Street, for all its catchy slogans, actually is hard to summarize in a 60-second slot on the evening news, and thank goodness. People showed up for all kinds of reasons: jobs lost to globalization, homes lost to foreclosure, health lost to the U.S.’s senseless farce of a health care system (here in Canada, where unemployment is lower, banks more regulated, and health care still mostly public, the list of grievances was slightly different but still passionately felt). The point was never to hammer out a unified, focus-grouped electoral platform; it was to finally articulate a widespread anger and dissatisfaction with the status quo. Reporters asked “Why are you here?” as if they expected a camera-ready soundbite. But many of us asked, “What took you so long?”

The latest economic crisis had its roots in the investment bank collapses of 2008, and the last three years or so have inflicted a series of indignities on millions of people around the world. Most of them bore their burdens in silence, working- and middle-class citizens feeling shame for suffering the effects of an economic calamity they didn’t cause. Crucially, they are the constituency who are now shrugging off that humiliation and focusing their anger on the ones who are truly to blame. Critiques of globalized capitalism are nothing new; thousands of previously unradicalized protesters in the street certainly is. They’re mad as hell—you know the rest. What will come of it, no one can say conclusively. But naming the problem is the first step, and the Occupy protests have done an admirable and necessary job.