It’s seems exaggerated and out of focus to let particular, ideological views -and the elaborated intellectualization of them, disguised as philosophies, and mixed with some personal dogmas, preferences and feelings- engage so deeply in a subjective understanding and meaning of the metaphoric use of “capital” in relation with humans and with what humans had been developing for decades to face realities and situations and to satisfy their needs (human, social, economic, cultural, scientific, technological, technical and environmental), building with the constant growth of their human (personal) capital much more than material or financial wealth.

“Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.”

Introduced in a proof of concept project in Russia in the wake of the 1998′Chicago School’ engineered collapse of their economy, it has remained well below radar.

From my experience in East Africa, everyone is desperate to get an education in order to get a decent job. Sure, this may be signaling more than actual knowledge accumulation (although something tells me that you don’t believe in signaling either), but you have to recognise that economic forces and interests help drive the demand, and the resulting value of education.

Lots of food for thought in one small post. Thanks!

I wouldn’t necessarily blame economists for all this. Alot of regular folk want to see their public services in terms of the value that they provide. They pay for it, they want to ensure accountability for their tax dollars.

I also do not think the term intends to ‘capitalize humans’ but instead asserts that humans produce value intrinsically – another way to parse the phrase is ‘capital that belongs or comes from humans.’

Where I come from, these analogies are providing the opposite effect – they are opening the doors to help stodgey public servants to see the value in developing communities and staying the heck out of their business. From this attitude we get ‘asset based’ community development, which I think is a much more friendly view of communities (assuming that they are valuable in and of themselves, rather than ‘problems’ that need to be solved).

I rather like the idea of economics as phrenology: a redundant fad that withers and dies but, more realistically, we need to treat it as an art rather than a science and put it firmly in its place when deciding what to prioritise about our common ordering – after all a home economy is undertaken to achieve wider purposes – human well being, hospitality etc not for its own sake.

Is your suggestion that most economists reject this idea? I doubt this is the case.

What, therefore, is at the heart of your objection?

The idea that individuals can be reduced to instruments in (not of) the productive process is both true, and also a gross simplification of human life.

But can you propose an alternative way that helps explain why two countries with the same number of people, the same amount of physical capital can have different levels of income per capita?

I’d be interested to know that as you drop the use of the term ‘human capital’ and instead start saying ’skills and knowledge’, will you also assume that such elements have no place in how and what is produced?