Contents

Talk:Individual capital

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VOTE!! - HDI in Infobox#Countries|country infobox/template?[edit]

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a standard UN measure/rank of how developed a country isoris not. It is a composite index based on GDP per capita (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, and school enrollment. However, as it is a composite index/rank, some may challenge its usefulness or applicability as information.

Thus, the following question is put to a vote:

Should any, some, or all of the following be included in the Wikipedia Infobox#Countries|country infobox/template:

(1) Human Development Index (HDI) for applicable countries, with year;

(2) Rank of country’s HDI;

(3) Category of country’s HDI (high, medium, or low)?

YES / NO / UNDECIDED/ABSTAIN - vote here

Thanks!

E Pluribus Anthony 01:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There are articles like sexual capital and extant academic terms like health capital which are clearly attributes of individual capital that have their own articles. We don't merge social capital into human capital either, as it is pretty obvious that social attributes aren't individual ones. There must be some respect in Wikipedia for a few basic ontological categories even if the literature is sometimes inconsistent in its use of terms or idiosyncratic terms (like health capitalorknowledge capital) come into fashion (and just as quickly go out because they are not at all operational or measureable).

We can have a good human capital article that debates the relative importance of all of these factors, but we must retain separate articles describing each type of capital asset separately or the arguments get hopelessly confused. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.109.103 (talk) 22:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Long over due closure of this discussion which did not result in any change.Tmol42 (talk) 18:15, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Just for the record and anon IP just pasted a load of other editors discussions here dating back several months/years from I believe the Human Capital article. I have just reverted for obvious reason.Tmol42 (talk) 16:06, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Following further edits have restored content from other editors deleted by anon IP plus moved banner to top of page which had been pasted in from elsewhere and corrected rating on quality scale. Trust this page will now be edited correctly going forward so I do not need to spend more time sorting out the mess left behnd them by another editor!Tmol42 (talk) 18:25, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Brallan 23:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC) who raised this issue at Talk:human capital. The above draws on that comment and other anonymous comments and is a summary and suggested for inclusion in the article in some form:[reply]

Rehuman capitalvshuman resources, the latter may commodify people. If people once saw the human "commodity" as necessarily homogenous or easily interchangeable, are we wiser now? Art and animals and crude oil and trees are all individual commodities only as homogenous and as interchangeable as the capacities of the market to recieve them as commodities and deal with their individualities. Were slaves weighed by pound? The article deals explicitly with slavery and how its analysis is simplified by the concept of individual capital, a term somewhat more objective than "resources" or "talent" or "labour" because it's always and only about what's attached to the individual.

There's no way to sanitize talking about human beings as commodities, but this hasn't prevented scores of economists from trying. Some suspect that the entire concept of human capital is an attempt to convince folks that talking about human beings as resources is OK if we can see their individuality and the subtleties created within them by our expenditures on things almost like PR - like education, churches, etc. abominable lot, the economists. However, "human capital" terminology is well established and it's mostly a question of knowing how to identify it's components, driving factors, and so on, in a way that recognizes individual value somehow, not just as "labour" or "resources" or social or "intellectual" powers. This term seems to do that well.

In "The Wealth of Nations" Smith recognized the existence of 'human capital', even though he did not explicitly call it that. In his time it was common to talk in a very classist way about "labour". But Smith did clearly refer to entrepreneurship, initiative, as a separate thing, but not so easy to quantify. That's what modern economists are doing in intangibles analysis, and individual capital is one of their solutions to the problem of labelling what's unique about individuals. As with other types of capital, it can (only?) be accumulated by sacrifice (time and effort to learn, practice), and more importantly, not even the simplest 'unskilled labour' can be accomplished without some latent or tacit human capital. Knowing what a shovel is, knowing language and understanding instfcuk france ruction all require a modicum of human capital. Perhaps learning to use a shovel, practicing it, using it on behalf of someone as a social obligation, all show how human capital can interact with tools and tasks without money involved at all.

Also, production without labour puts more emphasis on talent

When production is at a level to where labour as such is no longer needed, then it may be fair to surmise that the human needs would be satisfied by said production with no need for addition of human labor. It may be likened to approaching some sort of socialist uptopia where the machines do all the work as we pursue loftier matters of art and gamesmanship of various kinds. After all, the only reason a human picks up a shovel is to sell his labor in exchange for money with which to satisfy physical needs produced by others who, in turn, must also be compensated for their labor. If labor is no longer required, then we can let production go on while humans pursue whatever other activity they choose. Some humans have already attained such a state by creating wealth from thin air without having invested a stitch of labor. This is even more reason to differentiate individual talent, because that's whats valuable when labour is free, intellect is cheapened by AI, celebrity and social relationships arise for no discernable reason.

A summary of another individual capital issue for eventual inclusion in the article. Thanks User:Rjanag who raised this at talk:human capital.

Credentials signalling innate ability may be more important than actual education. Modern labor economists treat signalling effects (evidencing one's superior ability, given by nature, to employers who can't identify a high-ability individual from a low-ability one) as the most significant theoretical challenge to human capital theory, which is not described in the article. The seminal paper on signalling is "Job Market Signalling," by Michael Spence, which formalized games of asymmetric information and was probably the main contributor to his awarding of the Nobel Prize.

Chevalier, Harmon, Walker, and Zhu (2004) provide a lit review of the debate Does Education Raise Productivity, or Just Reflect it? - Yu Zhu, Arnaud Chevalier, Ian Walker, Colm Harmon

The notion of human capital also has, however, a negative and mechanistic connotation. Specifically the dehumanizing implication of "human capital" led Germans to confer the dubious honor on humankapital as the most unpopular word of the year 2004.

— Fladrich, Anja M. (2006). "Graduate Employment in China: The case of Jiujiang Financial and Economic College in Jiangxi". China Information. 20 (2): 203.