I overheard someone being referred to as successful today.  This observation was supported by the fact that the person in question owned a number of properties, a profitable business and had accumulated a noteworthy amount of money.

There was no mention of the person’s health, happiness, non-fiscal accomplishments or the business’s social or environmental impact.  The ‘naturalness’, and general acceptance, of this attribution of the ‘successful’ moniker is an indication of how entrenched monetary value systems are in capitalist societies.

The subtlety of this is that there is societal pressure to pursue success to the detriment of consequences that are not included in the monetary measure of success.  This is in fact so entrenched in modern capitalism that the measure of a country’s ‘success’ is through its GDP, a measure that takes no account of consequences such as environmental damage and intergenerational transfer of burden.

The inadequacy of this measure is clearly demonstrated when you consider that an environmental disaster, such as a large oil spill or nuclear contamination could increase the GDP of a country if the cleanup of the damage stimulated economic activity.

The provision of goals in any system needs to considered carefully.  Capitalism sets goals of self interest and increased consumption, both which are at odds with sustainable human existence and societal well being.