I like the idea of a dashboard, but I’m not at all sold on using consumption as a proxy for progress. To take an obvious example, the computer I am on now uses fewer watts than the computer I was on a decade ago, and will therefor show up as a decrease in energy use. Yet it is superior by every metric that we judge computers by. A Tesla will get more miles for the same amount of energy compared to a traditional gas car. In general, I think we may be at a point in history where progress takes the form of producing better quality products with fewer inputs, and a dashboard that focuses on consumption will incorrectly show that as regression.
This may be more difficult to actually get numbers for, but I think a better sort of metric might be output over input—number of watt-hours divided by number of hours of human labor used to produce those watt-hours.
I like the idea of a dashboard, but I’m not at all sold on using consumption as a proxy for progress. To take an obvious example, the computer I am on now uses fewer watts than the computer I was on a decade ago, and will therefor show up as a decrease in energy use. Yet it is superior by every metric that we judge computers by. A Tesla will get more miles for the same amount of energy compared to a traditional gas car. In general, I think we may be at a point in history where progress takes the form of producing better quality products with fewer inputs, and a dashboard that focuses on consumption will incorrectly show that as regression.
This may be more difficult to actually get numbers for, but I think a better sort of metric might be output over input—number of watt-hours divided by number of hours of human labor used to produce those watt-hours.
Not obvious: in many cases, greater efficiency actually increases total resource usage! See Jevons Paradox.
It’s possible we’re at a turning point on one or more resources where we’ve kind of saturated the market… but I’m far from convinced.
That said, a productivity metric like you mention is also a good idea. I chose that for agriculture because I do think we have saturated that market.