从 GDP 到 GDE

From GDP to GDE

——如何切断“规模—外汇—互害”的制度循环？

How to Cut the Institutional Loop of “Scale–Foreign Exchange–Mutual Harm”

钱 宏（Archer Hong Qian）

2026年1月30日·Vancouver

统一前言:为什么我们必须重新思考“增长”的含义?

过去半个多世纪，人类文明几乎达成了一个隐含共识：只要经济规模在增长，问题终将被解决；只要 GDP 在上升，生活改善只是时间问题。

这一信念在工业文明的扩张阶段曾经奏效。它支撑了战后重建、基础设施铺展、全球贸易网络的形成，也为数十亿人口提供了脱离绝对贫困的现实路径。

然而，进入 21 世纪第二个十年后，这一共识开始系统性失灵。

越来越多的国家与社会同时经历着一种矛盾状态：宏观指标持续扩张，微观体感却持续收缩；规模能力不断增强，生活确定性却不断下降；金融资产与外汇储备屡创新高，家庭与社区却普遍感到紧张、脆弱与不安。

这些现象并非孤立事件，也并非单一国家的治理失败。它们跨越制度、文化与意识形态，呈现出高度相似的结构特征。

这迫使我们提出一个过去被刻意回避的问题：当“增长”本身不再自动带来生活改善，问题究竟出在分配环节，还是出在我们衡量成功的方式本身？本组三篇文章，正是围绕这一问题展开。

第一篇从制度与文明层面，揭示“无效 GDP”如何通过债务、通胀与计价权，形成一个可自我维持的闭环；

第二篇通过外汇与购买力平价的结构分析，说明为何宏观规模优势并不会自然转化为普遍生活改善，反而可能外溢为国际层面的互害机制；

第三篇则尝试回答一个更具建设性、也更具挑战性的问题：如果问题不在增长本身，而在增长的价值参量，我们是否有可能改变这套参量？

这不是一组反增长、反市场、反全球化的文章。恰恰相反，它们试图为增长、市场与全球协作，寻找一种不再依赖透支未来与转嫁成本的继续存在方式。

引言：问题已非“要不要增长”，而是“增长是否还值得被承认”

在前两篇中，我们已经完成了两件事：

第一，证明当代全球经济的核心困境，并非周期波动，而是一套以规模为导向的价值核算体系已经失效；

第二，说明在这一体系下，即便出现“GDP 第二、PPP 第一、外汇储备第一”的宏观成就，也并不会自然转化为普遍的生活改善，反而可能外溢为国际层面的互害机制。

至此，问题已经不在于“要不要增长”，而在于一个更根本、也更危险的问题：

我们是否仍然允许任何形式的增长，不加区分地被计入“成功”？

如果答案是肯定的，那么无论换成金本位、银本位、稳定币本位，甚至换一种全球霸权货币，结果都不会改变——

规模会继续扩大，生活却继续被挤压；外汇会继续增长，信任却继续流失。

这正是第三篇必须回答的问题：

如何在不否定市场、不依赖道德觉醒、不诉诸意识形态的前提下，让制度本身失去“奖励无效增长”的能力？

一｜问题的真正根源：不是货币错了，而是“价值参量”错了

我们习惯把经济问题归结为政策失误、分配不公、外部冲击，甚至归结为某些国家或群体的“动机问题”。

但如果把视角抬高一个层级，就会发现一个更具解释力、也更令人不安的事实：

当一个文明用“发生了多少交易”来替代“创造了多少价值”，那么系统性失真不是偶然，而是必然。

GDP 的历史功绩不容否认。在工业文明阶段，它成功地完成了一项艰难的任务：

用一个统一的货币标尺，把分散的生产与交换活动汇总成“规模能力”。

但问题在于：

这一“加法逻辑”，在 21 世纪已经无法识别三类关键事实：

a.哪些活动在透支未来的偿付能力；

b.哪些增长在侵蚀家庭、社区与生态；

c.哪些“成功”只是把成本从当下推迟到未来、从组织转嫁给个体、从中心转移到外围。

于是我们看到一种熟悉而危险的景象：

账面繁荣持续存在，但生活体感持续恶化；规模不断刷新纪录，但社会信任与国际秩序却同步下滑。

这并非治理能力不足，而是价值参量本身出了问题。

二｜GDE 的核心意义：不是替代 GDP，而是“审计 GDP”

共生经济学提出的 GDE（Gross Development of Ecology / Gross Domestic Efficiency），常被误解为“要用一个新指标取代 GDP”。

这是一个严重的误解。

GDE 并不试图否定 GDP 的存在价值，而是改变 GDP 的地位。

在 GDE 框架中，GDP 被明确地“降维”：

a.从“终极目标”，降为原始输入流量；

b.从“成功本身”，降为需要被审计的成本项。

换句话说：

GDP 回答的是：发生了什么？

GDE 回答的是：这些事情是否值得继续发生？

这一转变的关键，不在于加减法，而在于乘法过滤。

GDE 的基本结构可以概括为：

GDE = Σ（GDP? × η?）

其中，η 并不是简单的能效系数，而是一个综合效能参数，至少同时包含三个维度：

a.对资源与能源效率的影响；

b.对社会福祉与生活确定性的影响；

c.对生态系统与未来承载力的影响。

当 η < 1，意味着这部分 GDP 虽然“发生了”，但在整体上稀释了文明的真实价值；

当 η > 1，才意味着增长在放大社会的长期效能。

GDE 的目标不是制造“更好看的数字”，而是让“无效增长在制度上变得不划算”。

三｜如何切断“规模—外汇—互害”的制度回路？

在第二篇中，我们已经用“文明诊断图”清楚地展示了一个事实：

外汇之所以难以普惠，并非因为“不分配”，而是因为从进入、安置到转化的每一个环节，都绕开了家庭与生活。

那么，GDE 的介入，究竟改变了什么？

1在“入口端”切断无效增长的自动通行证

在 GDP 体系下，只要发生货币化交易，几乎就拥有了“进入成功叙事”的通行证。

无论是低效基建、重复投资，还是以牺牲家庭与生态为代价的规模扩张，都可以被等价计入。

GDE 的第一项改变是：

不再允许“只凭规模”进入成功账本。

当效能系数 η 成为必要条件时：

a.那些依赖透支未来、压缩生活空间的增长，其账面权重会被系统性折减；

b.那些真正改善生活、降低社会成本的活动，反而会获得更高的价值权重。

这不是行政否决，而是价值审计。

2｜在“安置端”改变资本与外汇的流向逻辑

外汇与资本之所以长期“向外走、向上走”，并非因为决策者不关心民生，而是因为现行体系下：

改善生活的收益，往往无法在宏观账本中被充分识别。

GDE 改变的，正是这一“识别能力”。

当公共服务可及性、居民生活成本下降、生态修复等因素被明确计入效能参数，资本的最优配置方向就会发生变化：

a.投向家庭与社区，不再是“成本中心”，而是效能放大器；

b.投向生态修复，不再是“道德支出”，而是长期价值资产。

在这种结构下，外汇与资本不需要被“强制留在国内”，它们会在效能更高的地方自然沉淀。

3｜在“转化端”重建“购买力 → 生活价值”的通道

最致命的问题，从来不是“有没有购买力”，而是：

购买力是否对应真实的、可持续的生活改善。

GDE 在这一点上提供了一个极其重要的判别工具：

转化率 R = GDE / GDP。

a.当 R < 1，意味着这个体系正在用更多交易，换取更少的真实价值；

b.当 R > 1，意味着增长正在增强社会的生命承载力。

这一指标，使得“宏观繁荣、微观寒冬”不再是感受问题，而成为可被制度识别的结构失衡。

四｜为什么 GDE 不是乌托邦，也不是“另一种意识形态”

任何试图重构价值体系的方案，都会遭遇同一个质疑：

这是否只是另一套理想化叙事？

GDE 与以往失败的尝试（如单纯的幸福指数、绿色 GDP 修正）有一个根本差异：

它不要求人变得更善良，只要求制度不再奖励破坏性聪明。

GDE 不需要：

a.一个全知全能的政府；

b.一个道德完美的市场；

c.一个放弃竞争的世界。

它只做一件事：改变“什么行为更划算”。

当透支未来的增长在账本上被折价，当改善生活的投入在制度上获得溢价，选择就会改变，而无需动机被“净化”。

小结｜真正的转型，不是抑制增长，而是让增长重新对生命负责

回顾这三篇的逻辑，其实始终围绕着一个极其朴素的问题：

增长，究竟是为了让数字变大，还是为了让生活变好？

在 GDP 主导的时代，我们用规模掩盖了代价，用未来抵押了当下；在 GDE 提供的视角中，增长第一次被要求回答一个被长期回避的问题：

你为谁创造了什么？代价由谁承担？是否值得继续？

当这一问题被制度化、被量化、被持续追问时，“规模—外汇—互害”的回路，才真正失去了自我延续的正当性。

文明的跃迁，并不发生在口号中，而发生在记账方式改变的那一刻。

统一结语:当记账方式改变，文明的方向才会改变

回看这组三篇讨论，可以发现一个贯穿始终的判断：

当一个文明把“发生了多少交易”当作终极真理，它迟早会用规模掩盖代价，用未来抵押当下，用他人的不稳定换取自己的暂时平衡。

无论是无效 GDP 的反复累积，还是外汇与购买力被集中使用、难以普惠生活，抑或国际关系中不断加剧的不信任与投机行为，其深层原因都指向同一件事：

我们长期缺乏一套能够区分“价值创造”与“价值稀释”的制度性机制。

在这种情况下，通胀与通缩会被反复用作技术性工具，债务会被不断延期与滚动，资产与风险会被持续重估与转移，而生活成本与不确定性，则被系统性地压向家庭、社区与未来世代。

共生经济学提出的 GDE（生態发展总值 / 国民效能总值），并非一种完美方案，也不是现行体系的简单替代品。它的真正意义，在于把“增长是否值得”这一问题，重新引入制度核心。

当 GDP 从终极目标降维为原始输入，当效能、福祉与生态成为必须被计入的价值参数，增长才第一次被要求对生命本身负责，而不仅仅对账面负责。

这种转变不会一蹴而就，也不可能没有阻力。但历史一再证明：真正决定文明走向的，从来不是资源是否充足，而是记账方式是否诚实。

当一个社会开始认真区分哪些增长值得被延续，哪些繁荣只是推迟的代价，文明的方向，才会真正发生改变。

这，或许正是我们此刻最需要的，不是更快的扩张，而是一次关于“什么值得被承认”的集体校准。

作者单位：Intersubjective Symbiosism Foundation·CANADA

From GDP to GDE

How to Cut the Institutional Loop of “Scale–Foreign Exchange–Mutual Harm”

Hong Qian (Archer Hong Qian)
January 30, 2026 · Vancouver

Affiliation: Intersubjective Symbiosism Foundation · Canada

Unified Preface

Why Must We Rethink the Meaning of “Growth”?

For more than half a century, human civilization has operated under an implicit consensus:
as long as economic scale keeps expanding, problems will eventually be solved;
as long as GDP keeps rising, improvements in living standards are only a matter of time.

This belief once worked during the expansionary phase of industrial civilization.
It supported postwar reconstruction, the rollout of infrastructure, the formation of global trade networks, and provided a realistic path for billions of people to escape absolute poverty.

However, after entering the second decade of the 21st century, this consensus has begun to fail systematically.

An increasing number of countries and societies are now experiencing the same paradoxical condition simultaneously:
macroeconomic indicators continue to expand, while micro-level lived experience continues to contract;
productive capacity keeps growing, yet life certainty keeps declining;
financial assets and foreign exchange reserves hit record highs, while households and communities increasingly feel tense, fragile, and insecure.

These phenomena are neither isolated incidents nor governance failures of individual countries.
They cut across systems, cultures, and ideologies, exhibiting strikingly similar structural characteristics.

This forces us to confront a question long deliberately avoided:
when “growth” no longer automatically translates into better lives, is the problem merely one of distribution—or does it lie in the very way we define and measure success?

This three-part series is organized around that question.

• The first essay reveals, at the institutional and civilizational level, how “ineffective GDP” forms a self-sustaining closed loop through debt, inflation, and pricing power.

• The second analyzes foreign exchange and purchasing power parity, explaining why macro-scale advantages do not naturally translate into broad-based improvements in living standards, and may instead spill over into mechanisms of international mutual harm.

• The third addresses a more constructive—and more challenging—question: if the problem is not growth itself, but the value parameters by which growth is measured, can those parameters be changed?

This is not a set of anti-growth, anti-market, or anti-globalization essays.
On the contrary, it seeks a way for growth, markets, and global cooperation to continue—without relying on mortgaging the future or externalizing costs.

Introduction

The Question Is No Longer “Whether to Grow,” but “Whether Growth Is Still Worth Recognizing”

In the first two essays, we accomplished two things:

First, we demonstrated that the core dilemma of today’s global economy is not cyclical volatility, but the failure of a value-accounting system centered on scale.

Second, we showed that within this system, even achievements such as “second in GDP, first in PPP, first in foreign exchange reserves” do not naturally translate into broad improvements in living standards, and may instead spill over into international mutual-harm mechanisms.

At this point, the question is no longer whether to grow, but something more fundamental—and more dangerous:

Should we continue to allow all forms of growth, without distinction, to be counted as “success”?

If the answer is yes, then no matter whether we switch to a gold standard, silver standard, stablecoin standard, or even a different hegemonic global currency, the outcome will not change—

Scale will continue to expand, while life continues to be squeezed;
foreign exchange will continue to accumulate, while trust continues to erode.

This is precisely the question the third essay must answer:

How can we make institutions themselves lose the ability to reward ineffective growth—without rejecting markets, relying on moral awakening, or resorting to ideology?

I. The Real Root of the Problem

Not a Monetary Failure, but a Failure of “Value Parameters”

We are accustomed to attributing economic problems to policy mistakes, unfair distribution, external shocks, or even the “motives” of certain countries or groups.

But when we elevate our perspective by one level, a more explanatory—and more unsettling—fact emerges:

When a civilization substitutes “how many transactions occurred” for “how much value was created,” systemic distortion is not accidental—it is inevitable.

GDP’s historical contribution cannot be denied.
During the industrial era, it successfully accomplished a difficult task:

using a unified monetary yardstick to aggregate dispersed production and exchange activities into measurable “scale capacity.”

The problem is that this additive logic is no longer capable, in the 21st century, of identifying three critical realities:

a. Which activities are drawing down future repayment capacity;
b. Which forms of growth erode households, communities, and ecosystems;
c. Which “successes” merely defer costs into the future, shift them from organizations to individuals, or transfer them from centers to peripheries.

As a result, we see a familiar and dangerous pattern:

accounting prosperity persists, while lived experience deteriorates;
scale records are constantly broken, while social trust and international order decline in tandem.

This is not a failure of governance capacity—it is a failure of the value parameters themselves.

II. The Core Meaning of GDE

Not Replacing GDP, but Auditing It

The GDE proposed by Symbionomics—Gross Development of Ecology / Gross Domestic Efficiency—is often misunderstood as an attempt to replace GDP with a new indicator.

This is a serious misunderstanding.

GDE does not seek to negate GDP’s value; it seeks to reposition it.

Under the GDE framework, GDP is explicitly “dimensionality-reduced”:

a. From an ultimate goal to a raw input flow;
b. From “success itself” to a cost item that must be audited.

In other words:

GDP answers the question: What happened?
GDE answers the question: Were these things worth happening?

The key shift is not addition versus subtraction, but multiplicative filtering.

The basic structure of GDE can be summarized as:

GDE = Σ (GDP? × η?)

Here, η is not a simple energy-efficiency coefficient, but a composite effectiveness parameter that includes at least three dimensions:

a. Impact on resource and energy efficiency;
b. Impact on social welfare and life certainty;
c. Impact on ecosystems and future carrying capacity.

When η < 1, it means that although this portion of GDP “occurred,” it diluted real civilizational value overall.
Only when η > 1 does growth amplify long-term social effectiveness.

The purpose of GDE is not to generate “better-looking numbers,” but to make ineffective growth institutionally unprofitable.

III. How Does GDE Cut the “Scale–Foreign Exchange–Mutual Harm” Loop?

In the second essay, a “civilizational diagnostic chart” clearly demonstrated one fact:

foreign exchange fails to benefit the public not because of a lack of redistribution, but because every step—from entry, to placement, to conversion—bypasses households and daily life.

So what does GDE actually change?

1. Cutting Off the Automatic Pass for Ineffective Growth at the Entry Point

Under the GDP system, once a monetary transaction occurs, it almost automatically gains entry into the “success narrative.”

Low-efficiency infrastructure, redundant investment, and scale expansion at the expense of households and ecosystems can all be counted equivalently.

GDE’s first change is this:

scale alone no longer grants access to the success ledger.

When the effectiveness coefficient η becomes a necessary condition:

a. Growth that relies on mortgaging the future or compressing living space is systematically discounted;
b. Activities that genuinely improve life and reduce social costs receive higher value weightings.

This is not administrative veto—it is value auditing.

2. Changing the Allocation Logic of Capital and Foreign Exchange at the Placement Stage

Capital and foreign exchange have long flowed outward and upward not because decision-makers ignore livelihoods, but because under the existing system:

returns from improving daily life are poorly recognized in macro accounts.

GDE changes precisely this recognition mechanism.

When public service accessibility, reductions in living costs, and ecological restoration are explicitly incorporated into effectiveness parameters, optimal capital allocation shifts:

a. Investment in households and communities becomes an effectiveness amplifier rather than a cost center;
b. Investment in ecological restoration becomes a long-term value asset rather than a moral expense.

Under such a structure, foreign exchange does not need to be forcibly retained domestically—it naturally settles where effectiveness is higher.

3. Rebuilding the Conversion Channel from Purchasing Power to Life Value

The most lethal problem has never been whether purchasing power exists, but whether it corresponds to real, sustainable improvements in life.

Here, GDE provides a crucial diagnostic tool:

Conversion ratio R = GDE / GDP

a. When R < 1, the system is using more transactions to obtain less real value;
b. When R > 1, growth is enhancing society’s life-carrying capacity.

This indicator transforms “macro prosperity, micro winter” from a feeling into a structurally identifiable imbalance.

IV. Why GDE Is Neither a Utopia nor “Another Ideology”

Any attempt to reconstruct a value system faces the same challenge:

Is this merely another idealized narrative?

GDE differs fundamentally from past failed attempts (such as happiness indices or green GDP adjustments) in one key respect:

it does not require people to become more virtuous—it only requires institutions to stop rewarding destructive cleverness.

GDE does not require:

a. An omniscient government;
b. A morally perfect market;
c. A world that abandons competition.

It does one thing only: it changes what behaviors are profitable.

When growth that mortgages the future is discounted in accounts, and investments that improve life receive institutional premiums, choices change—without the need to purify motives.

Summary

True Transformation Is Not Suppressing Growth, but Requiring Growth to Answer to Life

Across all three essays, the logic revolves around a simple question:

Is growth meant to make numbers bigger, or lives better?

In the GDP-dominated era, scale concealed costs and the future was mortgaged for the present.
Under the GDE perspective, growth is finally required to answer a long-avoided question:

For whom did you create what?
Who bears the cost?
Is it worth continuing?

Only when this question is institutionalized, quantified, and continuously asked does the “scale–foreign exchange–mutual harm” loop lose its legitimacy for self-perpetuation.

Civilizational shifts do not occur in slogans—they occur at the moment accounting rules change.

Unified Conclusion

When Accounting Changes, the Direction of Civilization Changes

Looking back at the three essays, a consistent judgment emerges:

When a civilization treats “how many transactions occurred” as ultimate truth, it will inevitably use scale to conceal costs, mortgage the future for the present, and trade others’ instability for temporary balance.

Whether through repeated accumulation of ineffective GDP, concentration of foreign exchange and purchasing power, or escalating distrust and speculation in international relations, the root cause is the same:

we have long lacked an institutional mechanism capable of distinguishing value creation from value dilution.

Under such conditions, inflation and deflation become technical tools, debt is endlessly rolled over, assets and risks are continuously revalued and transferred, and living costs and uncertainty are systematically pushed onto households, communities, and future generations.

The GDE proposed by Symbionomics is neither a perfect solution nor a simple substitute for the existing system.
Its true significance lies in reintroducing the question “Is growth worth it?” into the institutional core.

When GDP is reduced from ultimate goal to raw input, and effectiveness, welfare, and ecology become mandatory value parameters, growth is finally required to answer to life itself—not merely to accounting statements.

This transformation will not be instantaneous, nor will it be frictionless.
But history repeatedly shows: what determines the direction of civilization is never whether resources are sufficient, but whether accounting is honest.

When a society begins to seriously distinguish which forms of growth deserve continuation and which forms of prosperity are merely deferred costs, the direction of civilization truly begins to change.

Perhaps what we need most at this moment is not faster expansion, but a collective recalibration of what is worthy of recognition.