DP. Human Development. Freedom to, of and for people.

It seems that what Krugman told about the lesson that the Indian professor said to his students, have been bad understood and, unfortunately, achieve around the world. The professor couldn’t reflect in a better way the aim of many economist and policy makers: “if you are good and virtuous economist you will reincarnate as a physic, but if you are bad and perverse you will do as a sociologist” (Krugman, 1995).

Economics is a complex science, as well as reality is complex, is changing. Nevertheless, it exist a strange desire to reduce it into a simple and perfect one. Why? Because in this sense, is easier to measure it and to give short-run results.

This is evident on the reduction that development has on economic growth. So, we have forgotten the essential questions: why, for what, and for whom.

Nowadays we live in a contradictory world. On the one hand, there is a huge technological progress, the production potential is on the highest levels, the distances are getting shorter (thanks to the globalization of trade, ideas, communications), democracy is the preeminent political model, and in average the wealth of the world is increasing. On the other hand, we live in a world with remarkable depravations destitutions and oppressions. Poverty, inequality, violation of the most elementary subsistence human’s conditions and tyrannies, are realities that we could no avoid; neither from an economic policy perspective, neither from an ethics point of view.

Just have a look over these features. Inequalities are growing, not just the only related to the distribution of income –more o less 40% of the total world income is concentrated on the 1% of the total world population-, but also those associated to gender, access to education, health and other public services. Then, around 1.300 million of people live in extreme poverty, with less than 1 US$ per day, and 3.000 millions people are in poverty conditions.  At the same time, we are creating an ecological disequilibrium that threats our own survival (Kliksberg, 2006).

So, as long as development stills remain as a technician problem that requires technical solutions, the world will stills be looking to the wrong direction.

Development is about the expansion of the real freedoms and capabilities that the people enjoy and that lead them to life a live that they value. These freedoms go beyond the satisfaction of basics necessities. In Amartya Sen’s words, “development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms – such as lack of political rights, famines, poverty, etc. – that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency” (Sen, 2000)

The important thing here is not the income by itself, but the capability that people has to transform this “money” into what they need and think its necessary to live the life that they want. This perspective places humans as an active subject and not only as a beneficiary of the development process. “The process of development can expand human capabilities by increasing the choices that people have to live full and creative lives“ (Sen, 2000).

Therefore, freedom is the end and the means of development. Freedom allows people to increase the capabilities they need to life that they want (it has an instrumental value). At the same time, freedom is desirable not because of “something else”, it is because it own sake. We do not want to be free because it give us something more than freedom it self (intrinsic value).

I want to conclude regarding to Aristotle. Happiness (eudaimonia) is the supreme end that we are looking for. This means the same as living well and doing well. It is quite important to remember this to us and to the world.

Sources:

Krugman P. Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations. W. W. Norton & Company.  April 17, 1995.

Kliksberg, B. Capital social y cultura, claves del desarrollo. Inter-American Development Bank, Washington. February. 2006.

Sen A. Development as Freedom. Anchor; Reprint edition. August 15, 2000.

2 comentarios / 28 Nov 2011 por Diana Patricia Sanchez Barajas
IMSD /

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