Drug companies measure themselves, not by number of lives saved or patients helped, but by profit or its close-cousin EPS. And, in this and many cases, money is actually a poor proxy for anything but money.
It's called "capitalism". That's what's definitional here. Profit (return on capital/money) and profit-growth are recognized as ultimate end goals. So, of course we measure it and clearly pursue it for its own sake. VCs aren't interested in raw unit production if those units can't be sold at a profit. And, in simple terms, the company can't yield ROI to the investor if it is unprofitable. That's why we measure money instead of unit production. It's not because money is "a convenient proxy, something-something Industrial Revolution".
But, all of this is self-evident, so makes for boring discussion. What's interesting is considering how this emphasis on money distorts and underserves society.
Whether we optimize for widgets per hour or dollars per hour, we end up at the same place: a ravenous, soul-crushing machine consuming blood and sweat to produce a bigger number. This is the result the industrial revolution has wrought.
>Whether we optimize for widgets per hour or dollars per hour, we end up at the same place
That might be true, but was not your original assertion.
Your earlier comment stated that the type of economy didn't matter: socialism, capitalism, etc. weren't the problem; only the Industrial Revolution.
Socialists agreed with you about the Industrial Revolution crushing souls. They also believed capitalism was to blame (specifically, laissez-faire capitalism).
We don't measure widgets. We measure money. That has everything to do with capitalism, and little to do with the Industrial Revolution.
These are my definitions: capitalism is private ownership of capital; socialism is public ownership of capital; and the industrial revolution is the discovery and proliferation of processes and mechanisms for the exploitation of capital consistently and efficiently at scale.
Though I have attempted to explain my point, I have not altered it.
It's called "capitalism". That's what's definitional here. Profit (return on capital/money) and profit-growth are recognized as ultimate end goals. So, of course we measure it and clearly pursue it for its own sake. VCs aren't interested in raw unit production if those units can't be sold at a profit. And, in simple terms, the company can't yield ROI to the investor if it is unprofitable. That's why we measure money instead of unit production. It's not because money is "a convenient proxy, something-something Industrial Revolution".
But, all of this is self-evident, so makes for boring discussion. What's interesting is considering how this emphasis on money distorts and underserves society.