Cruise Continued

We stopped at Dubrovnik today. We had been here before; and in fact this was one of my favorite places. I was not so good today. There were at least 3 other cruise ships here. One was 10 times the size of this one. The old city was packed. I hid out at coffee bar and pondered what makes a society successful.

I did not come to a conclusion as to what makes a society successful, but spent the better part of my time working on a definition of success. I did not get to far with that either… except on the economic front. I think that GNP per capita AND the spread between the richest and the poorest need to be put into a formula and measured. High per capita GNP is good. A huge spread between rich and poor is bad, and a little spread is bad. People are just not that different to justify a large spread in income, and people are different so there has to be a spread of some kind. If a society has a large spread, there must be something intrinsically wrong with the economy; special privileges, or other fundamental problems that hinder mobility. Large spread societies should spend more money on education, childcare and the like in order to insure a true competitive environment. Small spread societies need to insure that the economic structure properly rewards hard work and entrepreneurship such that total GNP can grow.

There should be other measures of a successful society than economic ones. I think the percentage of people that vote in elections might be one; the higher the better. The education level and literacy rates as well as life spans, just to mention a few.

There were at least 10,000 people off cruise ships in port today, from many different countries, all probably wondering the same thing.
What makes for a successful society? One final measure of success is wondering about it in the first place.