Charles, i think that epitomizes the diffrent approaches you and i take. You seem to pay far more attention to epiphenomena, indicators, and representations of capitalism than necessary, whereas i consider that to be mostly fluff and would rather focus on analyzing the thing proper.
imho, criticising the gdp (an indicator) seems to be a waste of effort - a sort of latter-day luddite approach that mistakes machinery for social system that creates them, or guns for people who pull the trigger. capitalism is about accumulation, not justice. gdp has been devised to measure accumulation, period. it does its job well - it measures what capitalism is all about. if someone has problems with capitalism, he or she should focus on its systemic features - institutions that privatize profits while socialize costs of production - instead of concepts measuring the volume of capitalist wealth. It is tantamount to critcizing the decimal (metric) system used in us currency denominations (e.g. dollars and cents).
i may also add that devising alternative to gdp measures of national economic performance that flatten the gap between the few highly developed nations and the rest of the world is politically reactionary because it makes the redistribution of income less urgent by saying 'things are not as bad as the gdp-based indicators imply.' You can make a much more powerful critique by saying that people are dying amidst of plenty and use gdp to show the magnitude of that plenty.
Here is an example how you can use gdp in the above described fashion - by comparing shares of the gdp spent on social welfare. despite its gigantic gdp, the us trails well behind the developend countries of europe and is on a par with the developing third world countries
Government social welfare spending as % of GDP (source: OECD and Johns Hopkins CNP data)
Austria 27.1% Belgium 28.8% Finland 32.1% France 30.1% Germany 29.6% Netherlands 28.0% Spain 21.5% UK 22.8% Italy 24.7% Sweden 36.4% "EU" average 28.1%
Argentina 14.8% Brazil 15.7% Colombia 10.0% Peru 12.5% "Latin American" average 13.2%
US 16.3%
there is a sufi proverb "a fool tries to convince me with his arguments, a sage - with my own." a critique of capitalism that uses standard concept of bourgeois vocabulary is much more powerful that one that uses some obscure ngo-speak.
wojtek