Progress as Freedom, Not Applause: Sen’s Measure
Measure progress by the freedom you create, not by others' applause. — Amartya Sen
Reframing Progress Through Capabilities
Amartya Sen’s challenge redirects our gaze from spectators to substantive change. Rather than tallying praise, he urges us to ask: do people have real opportunities to live the lives they value? This is the core of the capability approach, which Sen popularized in Development as Freedom (1999). Freedom here is not merely the absence of constraint; it is the presence of capability—health, education, mobility, voice, and security—that enables choice. Martha Nussbaum’s Creating Capabilities (2011) complements this view by outlining central human capabilities societies should secure. Thus, progress becomes less about optics and more about the expansion of lives people can actually lead.
The Seduction and Limits of Applause
However, applause is a noisy signal. It often measures charisma, conformity, or momentary spectacle, not durable improvements in agency. Goodhart’s Law—coined by economist Charles Goodhart (1975)—warns that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Praise can be gamed through vanity metrics, curated narratives, or coercive displays, creating an illusion of success. By contrast, freedom is harder to fake: if individuals can exit bad options, refuse unfair terms, or choose from multiple viable paths, then something genuine has improved, regardless of the crowd’s ovation.
Historical Lessons on Spectacle and Substance
History bears this out. Authoritarian regimes have staged mass adulation—from the Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s to contemporary personality cults—while shrinking civil and personal liberties. Public acclamation rose as freedoms collapsed. Conversely, freedom-expanding reforms often arrived before applause caught up. The extension of women’s suffrage—New Zealand (1893), the United States (1920), and beyond—frequently confronted derision before becoming civic common sense. These episodes reveal a pattern: applause can precede, lag, or diverge from genuine progress, whereas the yardstick of expanded capability remains constant.
From GDP to Freedom-Centered Metrics
Consequently, measurement must shift from outputs to options. Sen’s critique of GDP-only assessments inspired composite measures like the UNDP’s Human Development Index (1990 onward), which tracks health, education, and income. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (Alkire & Foster, 2011) further disaggregates deprivations across schooling, nutrition, housing, and more. Meanwhile, indices such as Freedom House’s annual reports and the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index gauge civil liberties and institutional constraints. Together, these tools pivot evaluation toward what people are free and able to do.
Policies That Expand Choice and Agency
In practice, progress accelerates when interventions increase people’s range of feasible options. Randomized evaluations synthesized by J-PAL and studies like Banerjee and Duflo’s Poor Economics (2011) show that well-designed programs—conditional cash transfers (e.g., Mexico’s Progresa/Oportunidades), targeted health subsidies, or direct cash—can raise schooling, health, and financial resilience. The common thread is agency: cash or services that reduce binding constraints often outperform tightly scripted aid that presumes one “correct” path. By designing for choice rather than compliance, policy aligns with Sen’s freedom-first yardstick.
Organizational Metrics Beyond Vanity
At the organizational level, applause appears as downloads, likes, or press hits. A freedom-centered scorecard asks different questions: how many users can complete core tasks without assistance? How easily can they export their data, switch providers, or set meaningful defaults? What fraction of employees have flexible schedules, clear grievance channels, and equitable promotion pathways? Such metrics track reversibility, portability, and autonomy—signals that people are less trapped and more empowered. They are harder to inflate, yet far more predictive of durable impact.
A Personal Compass for Daily Work
Ultimately, Sen’s dictum scales down to the individual. Instead of seeking plaudits, assess whether your actions widen someone’s horizon—through clearer information, fewer arbitrary steps, or options that respect different needs. As with Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive liberty in Two Concepts of Liberty (1958), the aim is both to remove unjust barriers and to build enabling conditions. When dilemmas arise, choose the path that increases another person’s real options. Applause may follow—or not—but freedom created is progress either way.