"GDP is only a measurement of how reliant a place or country is on the global economy. Self-sufficiency has a GDP of 0. Wasteful consooomerism has an extremely large GDP."
Outside of that everything in it is just a generic "companies are bad" "fiat currency is bad" "government is bad" spiel that has been said a billion times already.
But he doesn't care about efficiency. He's not saying GDP is a poor indicator of economic growth. He's more saying that economic growth is bad, globalism is bad, and maybe hinting that *skims other article on site* an ancient, simple life according to Orthodox Christianity is the true path to happiness. And this is too off-topic for me to discuss, I'm just laying out what the dude is saying.
There is probably an argument that for accounting purposes a person should bill themselves at market costs for self-work. E.g. mowing the lawn, changing one's own oil, doing one's taxes -- all are economic activities with a value associated which is 'lost' in a traditional GDP calculation.
And all this is assuming that the community uses money. A self sufficient community would have 0 GDP iff no money was exchanged.
I do think you can substitute "sum of numerical value" for GDP in most non-technical contexts and have them make sense.
In this case it could be that an economy doesn't trade 'rationally', so summing numerical values doesn't make sense. E.g. I'll trade you 1 chicken -> 2 shoes, someone else will trade 1 shoe -> 2 chickens.
I guess there would still be some numerical measure, but it'd be more of a matrix than a single number.
To use Luke's example, say buzzsaws introduce planned obsolescence. People buy more saws for no good reason, which is "good for the GDP." More fixed income goes to buzzsaws instead of eventually being spent on something more useful. The buzzsaw industry expands a bit, pulling people and resources from other endeavors. Society is collectively spending its effort producing then throwing away buzzsaws when it could have created future growth through technology etc, which the GDP would eventually measure.
I would add that GDP is a measure of how fast a country is using up the finite resources of the planet, racing to kill us all.