In the matrix, even the mode of having includes many elements that are very
difficult to quantify and monetize, like human rights, insurance systems, and educational policies. Mainstream economics tries to use willingness-to-pay surveys to
judge their importance to people. People might be asked how much in monetary
terms a public health insurance system should cost per capita. But a simple twist in
the question will change the answer: asking whether they have to pay to keep
something renders different results from asking how much they would want to be
paid as compensation for it being taken away. So just checking the price will not get
you far in understanding the complete picture of how and why certain choices are
being made or which needs exactly are satisfied through it.
This is also one of the conclusions of Well-Being for Public Policy by
world-leading well-being psychologists Ed Diener and John Helliwell. It compiles
the research of many psychological studies on the relationship between willingness
to pay, income and the well-being that people report in surveys to conclude that “the
economic decisions that people make, and the money that they have, may not be
perfect indicators of the well-being that they experience” (Diener et al. 2009: 40).
The most important message of Max-Neef’s matrix in terms of a Great
Mindshift, however, lies even beyond exposing blind spots of monetization and
price indicators. It declares the set of human needs to be limited and the range of
possible satisfiers to be abundant once the economistic consumption lens is
removed. This is in direct contrast to the standard economic assumption of
unlimited human needs and scarce resources, and it opens up a plethora of possible
solutions for good lives which do not have to cost the Earth. The satisfiers listed in
Table 3.2 provide only a few examples. Consequently, the goal of development can
become a holistic and endlessly creative endeavor of keeping environmental and
human relations responsive to an unfolding of satisfying potentials, so that material
goods serve satisfier strategies in alignment with contextually specific
circumstances.
The mainstream model, on the other hand, makes material goods the ends in and
of themselves and assumes that all need-satisfying springs from them. This means
that successful development can only be imagined as linear in one direction: more
gain. Slowing down and reducing production cannot be a strategy because then
well-being will drop. According to Max-Neef, adopting this worldview means that
“the speed of production and the diversification of objects have become ends in
themselves and as such are no longer able to satisfy any need whatsoever. People
have grown more dependent on this system of production but, at the same time,
more alienated from it” (Max-Neef 1992: 204).
Max-Neef therefore criticizes prevailing development policies, which are primarily aimed at increasing consumption possibilities by market integration. They
stimulate the accumulation of goods regardless of human development status in
those systems. This results in an increasing dependence on externally generated
satisfiers, whose control lies beyond the influence of poor communities.
One example of this has been the structural adjustment programs of the
International Monetary Fund in the 1980s, in which many poor countries had to
embark on export-driven development strategies. This means the focus lay on the
66
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …
difficult to quantify and monetize, like human rights, insurance systems, and educational policies. Mainstream economics tries to use willingness-to-pay surveys to
judge their importance to people. People might be asked how much in monetary
terms a public health insurance system should cost per capita. But a simple twist in
the question will change the answer: asking whether they have to pay to keep
something renders different results from asking how much they would want to be
paid as compensation for it being taken away. So just checking the price will not get
you far in understanding the complete picture of how and why certain choices are
being made or which needs exactly are satisfied through it.
This is also one of the conclusions of Well-Being for Public Policy by
world-leading well-being psychologists Ed Diener and John Helliwell. It compiles
the research of many psychological studies on the relationship between willingness
to pay, income and the well-being that people report in surveys to conclude that “the
economic decisions that people make, and the money that they have, may not be
perfect indicators of the well-being that they experience” (Diener et al. 2009: 40).
The most important message of Max-Neef’s matrix in terms of a Great
Mindshift, however, lies even beyond exposing blind spots of monetization and
price indicators. It declares the set of human needs to be limited and the range of
possible satisfiers to be abundant once the economistic consumption lens is
removed. This is in direct contrast to the standard economic assumption of
unlimited human needs and scarce resources, and it opens up a plethora of possible
solutions for good lives which do not have to cost the Earth. The satisfiers listed in
Table 3.2 provide only a few examples. Consequently, the goal of development can
become a holistic and endlessly creative endeavor of keeping environmental and
human relations responsive to an unfolding of satisfying potentials, so that material
goods serve satisfier strategies in alignment with contextually specific
circumstances.
The mainstream model, on the other hand, makes material goods the ends in and
of themselves and assumes that all need-satisfying springs from them. This means
that successful development can only be imagined as linear in one direction: more
gain. Slowing down and reducing production cannot be a strategy because then
well-being will drop. According to Max-Neef, adopting this worldview means that
“the speed of production and the diversification of objects have become ends in
themselves and as such are no longer able to satisfy any need whatsoever. People
have grown more dependent on this system of production but, at the same time,
more alienated from it” (Max-Neef 1992: 204).
Max-Neef therefore criticizes prevailing development policies, which are primarily aimed at increasing consumption possibilities by market integration. They
stimulate the accumulation of goods regardless of human development status in
those systems. This results in an increasing dependence on externally generated
satisfiers, whose control lies beyond the influence of poor communities.
One example of this has been the structural adjustment programs of the
International Monetary Fund in the 1980s, in which many poor countries had to
embark on export-driven development strategies. This means the focus lay on the
66
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …