Manfred Max Neef

There's a playlist of videos of progressive economist Max Neef here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOsw2To4GRY&list=PLFC602C39EF0B310C

It is worthy of your time. I found a transcript here

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/22/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_us

from which I want to extract a nugget:

"The principles ,... of an economics which should be[,] are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle.

One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy [sic]
Two, development is about people and not about objects.

Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.

Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.

Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible.

And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life"

and in the interview, Max Neef clarifies / expands on two terms used:

"Nothing can be more important than life. And I say life, not human beings, because, for me, the center is the miracle of life in all its manifestations."

"Growth is a quantitative accumulation. Development is the liberation of creative possibilities. Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. You are not growing anymore, nor he nor me. But we continue developing ourselves. Otherwise we wouldn’t be dialoguing here now. So development has no limits. Growth has limits."

Fundamental human needs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs

I have just followed up the mention of Manfred Max-Neef in the RBE 101 vvideo (see previous post). The term used in his thinking is Fundamental human needs. Hee has nine classes of needs, including subsistence, and he breaks these categories each down further into four existential categories: being, having, doing and interacting.

Astoundingly, against subsistence, under both having and doing, he includes "work". This makes no sense to me, for reasons explained, but it's still useful analysis.