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simplyeric comments on The Importance of Goodhart's Law - Less Wrong
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If you just consider the endpoint, maybe. But why would you do that? What would you be trying to show?
IMHO, if we consider the time period 1918-1990, South America, India, Indonesia, and Africa - not to mention China, Japan, Mexico, and, gee, that's pretty much the whole world, isn't it? - all made more progress than the Soviet Union did. East Germany and large parts of eastern Europe probably made negative economic progress. It doesn't impress me that they were still better-off than parts of Africa after 50 years of decline.
When discussing the Soviet Union, and more specifically Russia, you have to also consider the beginning point as well. It should be noted how far behind Russia was compared to the rest of Europe in 1918. Coming out of abject serfdom bordering on generalized slavery, they actually made tremendous progress in both abstract metrics and tangible result in quality of life up until the late 50's or early 60's. Over time that then declined.
In any case, to an extent their G* was "production", measurable production, in the sample case: nails. Their G was not the market value of nails, their G was "progress through central planning", but they didn't know how to measure "progress" except through the early-capitalist metrics of "production". Thus: produce more = progress, in their practice. Our G* is GDP. People seem so happy with our GDP, without reflecting on things like income disparity, striation of wealth, etc. If we allow it, we can G* ourselves into a mutant 3rd world nation, with great GDP performance but declining quality of life generally. G is quality of life. Economists, and lay people, generally equate the two, and the correlate generally, but they are not irrevocably entangled.