Talk:Human capital
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the Economics WikiProject, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve economics-related articles.. |
| Start | rated as start-Class on the assessment scale |
| Mid | rated as mid-importance on the importance scale |
--71.215.125.65 03:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)Could you explain this to me more?
I've trimmed down and reworded some sentences and completely removed the gratuitous references to the human capital institute. I'm still concerned this reads too much like a Marxist vs Free Markets debate rather than constructively outlining the issues -DM 158.219.120.62 19:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Someone is spamming this page pretty frequently. I don't know if anything could be done, but it's kind of dull reverting the changes -DM 158.219.120.62 14:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
If it keeps up, we can just block it for changes by unregistered users. Brallan 23:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] was slavery human capital or just human resources?
Good effort DM. I think the article would be easier to round out by comparing it to human resources. HC smacks of a replacement term for HR - an attempt to commodify people but not objectify them, an obvious impossibility. People odddnce saw the human "commodity" as necessarily homogenous or easily interchangeable but we're much 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?
Im glad to say there's no way to sanitize talking about human beings as commodities, but i'm sure that hasn't prevented scores of economists from trying. I suspect that ddddthe 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. Brallan 23:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, the first I think about when I hear Human Resources or Human Capital is indeed slaves. And so you can guess how companies using this term consider the value of human life. 80.136.215.68 23:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Having had the opportunity to read Smith's the "The Wealth of Nations" this year, I thought it was important to make clear that Smith recognized the existence of 'human capital', even though he did not explicitly call it that. It is unfortunate that he did not analyze this 'fourth' type of fixed capital more.
But 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.
[edit] What Happens to "Human Capital" When Production No Longer Requires Labor ?
That time is really not very far off and needs to be considered. One might suggest that when production is at a level to where "human capital" is no longer needed, then it may be fair to surmize 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.
[edit] Signalling?
The article alludes to the hypothesis that credentials signalling innate ability may be more important than the actual education. Indeed, 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. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.188.71.152 (talk) 20:23, August 24, 2007 (UTC)
