Funda Oral wrote:
Should economics manage human needs or human needs manage economics ?
Please tolerate a bit of uncharacteristic literalism with me as I respond to the question. While I suspect I know what you are really intending to ask and support the impulse to ask the question, I feel a need to clarify the terminology so that it places more of the responsibility on us instead of the ubiquitous "them" implicitly referred to in the way I read the question.
My understanding is that, at its most basic level, economics refers to the study and practices related to how human needs and wants are (or are not) met. My understanding is that it emerged as a named focus discipline from philosophy. In addition to financial/monetary resource allocation, it refers to how all goods and services are allocated and the terms of exchange...including purchase by controlled or uncontrolled price setting, mandatory or voluntary government spending, use of funds donated to institutions representing faith communities, advocacy groups or other philanthropic voluntarily or be obligation, bartering, gifting, etc. On a deeper level it includes organizing our economic policies and practices around visions, values and principles.
In that context, each of us makes personal economic decisions daily that influence the larger world incrementally as individuals but significantly in the aggregate. We choose to invest in financial markets, or have others manage our investment, (anyone have a retirement plan of some kind?), or not. We can choose to direct our finances toward socially responsible businesses, or initiate or vote on shareholder issues in other companies to try to influence their behavior, etc. If we have the resources to do so we can also choose the extent to which we will allocate our personal time, money or other resources to influencing what is going on in our world locally or globally. These are economic decisions we have 100% control of.
We also choose to (or not to) make our voices heard in ways that make a difference (different than simply making our voices heard) with respect to local, regional, national and international issues. We can become active in influencing public policy on many levels. We can work hard to make sure the voices of those with whom we believe we disagree are authentically invited to participate in Open Space meetings we are a part of sponsoring or facilitating. We can work on our own abilities to discover any values that we may share with people who advocate strategies that we oppose and learn from their perspectives before we demonize them. If we work together we can increase the power of out individual voices....a choice that is ours to make.
So, for me the question is what vision, values and principles out to drive our individual and collective economic behavior...locally and globally?
Shalom Chris Kloth Think globally, act locally * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
