In many important ways, Malta has never had it so good.
Yet there is growing evidence that the Maltese disagree and are becoming increasingly unhappy. For very good reason.
The ‘economy’ is booming (at least superficially), but not so society. Many of the crude numbers of ‘progress’ are denied by much of our lived reality. Environment, traffic, construction, education, governance, law etc. Quality is constantly usurped by the cheerleaders of quantity.
To paraphrase Indian biologist Vandana Shiva, Gross Domestic Product has morphed into Gross Domestic Problem, escalating at an ever-increasing pace and impact. The promise of ‘development’ has become the reality of ‘underdevelopment’. Improvement has been magicked into deterioration.
And all of it accompanied by a tsunami of distraction, distortion, and deceit.
For very many, perhaps a majority now, Malta is travelling in entirely the wrong direction. We have allowed ourselves to become terrorised by the crude maths and equations of GDP, GNP and by the banal political and economic mantra that ‘increase’ is always better than ‘decrease’.
Our Alice in Wonderland beliefs about growth should remind us of the conversation between Alice and the doomouse. In response to the latter’s criticism that she had no right to grow, Alice asserted - like many a Maltese tycoon - 'Don't talk nonsense, you know you're growing too.' 'Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,' the dormouse retorted, 'not in that ridiculous fashion.'
But as Malta’s ‘great and good’ might say – growth, all growth, any growth is not only good, it’s great, regardless. So long as the money graph points upwards, all is good with the world.
Dissatisfaction with the very serious limitations of GDP and GNP has preoccupied much research and analysis over the past 50 years, but it has failed to derail the economic determinists and their political apologists. Many of the issues have been highlighted by a host of analysts including John Consiglio in this paper recently and also in just published research paper from Oxfam International.
From a human development perspective, GNP and GDP continue to give sole priority to the wrong things. They relate only to some parts of our economy and little of our society. They tell us precious little about who loses out and crucially who really benefits. They fully ignore social prosperity, something that is now constantly in the news here in Malta.
Also echoing decades of critical commentary nationally and internationally (most especially from ecologists), GNP and GDP criminally place no real value on nature and its many bounties. They declare nature to be ‘free’ (something we all now realise is utter tosh) and refuse to factor in the environmental costs of our ‘development’, especially in the wider (and poorer) world.
In our ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ world, they also ignore the value and importance of socially vital but yet unpaid work, especially that undertaken by many women. As such, GDP and GNP have been heavily criticised as frameworks that reinforce the agendas and power of mostly male elites.
As is plainly obvious here in Malta, their ideological dominance ensures a fatalism that undermines the pressing need for effective change.
We urgently need a new story for Malta, a new vision and pathway that radically shifts the focus away from Castille, the construction and hospitality sectors, our dominant and destructive political system, and our insane obsession with a straitjacket definition of wealth.
Alongside that new story, we also need a new consensus on what the alternatives could be for Malta - alternatives across a whole range of social, cultural, social, political, and environmental agendas. Alternatives that measure and value what’s actually important for individual, community and local life.
A rigorous re-assessment of flawed frameworks and ideologies such as GDP and GNP point to that new story and its potential to radically alter our negative trajectory.