Amartya Sen Says Development Follows Expanding Freedoms 237.0

Amartya Sen, 1998 Nobel Prize winner for economics, is one of the most eminent development economists today.

In his book, Development as Freedom (1999, Anchor), Professor Sen quotes Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics in justifying why he believes freedom is more important than wealth as the true object and subject of development:

“wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”

Professor Sen thus consigns as limited measures the typical wealth-based metrics of development like growth in per capita GDP and gini coefficient, or the UN’s Human Development Index that I used in a previous post to benchmark the start of the Aquino presidential term.

His view is innovative and logical though difficult to track and measure globally.

Amartya Sen’s core ideas in Development as Freedom. In his words, “the usefulness of wealth lies in the things it allows us to do” and not really much more.

Beyond wealth, as with the answer to the question “what is it that women most want?” in that well-known King Arthur story, the generic goal that encompasses all:

the expansion of freedoms for persons “to lead the kind of lives they value – and have reason to value.”

In this sense, expanding freedom can come in terms of enhancing capabilities and minimizing “unfreedoms.”

Accentuating the positive. On one hand, freedoms, as capabilities, have two dimensions related to evaluation and effectiveness.

The metrics I detailed in the previous post linked above pertain mainly to evaluation with issues of distributive justice and its effect on individuals that is the concern of the second dimension. More than averages in the metrics, effectiveness reflects the outcomes to the individual person.

Therefore, as positive policy, improving freedoms (and free agency) by better capabilities allows the individual person to perfect himself, regardless of the institutional arrangements, i.e. the absence of a strong ‘police’ state. It follows the natural order of humans as social beings that transact among each other to better satisfy all his needs.

Consequently, expanding free agency, defined in “the older- and ‘grander’ – sense as [the ability] to act and bring about change,” is one of two policy directions for development.

Minimizing he negative. On the other hand, negative policies to minimize “unfreedoms” also need to be undertaken as the other of two policy directions. Examples of unfreedoms include lack of access to labor markets, good education, and/or health and healthcare services

Professor Sen’s most memorable example based on historical facts is that famine never occurred in a democracy, i.e. freedom to transact, say for food, in a democratic state allows for natural distribution of food. Famine occurred in centrally-planed, feudal or police states where there was human attempts to control what is hard to control.

Another memorable example is that of high mortality or morbidity rates of certain communities in developed countries as compared to other communities in materially poorer countries, say in Africa or China, who give higher social value to health than to wealth.

Policies that alleviate these examples of unfreedoms will go a long way, for Professor Sen, towards development.

In conclusion. Based on the approach of expanding freedoms, he strongly believes that policy actions for development is global in scope, i.e. it applies to communities in both emerging markets and the developed worlds. The book is an mind opener with a power that comes from proceeding from a simple but common sense proposition.

I can tell of two stories from my experience in the developed world that supports his contention.

The view from my Mt. Maunganui flat in New Zealand.

My First World Stories.

My first story is about an experience in New Zealand where I lived and work for a couple of years. The picture at right is the view of the Bay of Tauranga from my flat that by itself is priceless compensation as I went to work every day.

I designed an incentive program, that with my Asian experience, I thought would surely work.

I was told outright that the scheme, based on money reward, will not work. Instead, he suggested giving an extra day off instead for better work attendance.

My second story is about my Dutch friends. I worked for a company that distributed products from Holland into the Philippines. Once, I asked a couple of them about their goals in life. Their outright response was that they want to retire healthy and enjoy life after a few decades of hard work.

To me, the lesson from both stories is that, in more developed societies with better social safety nets, to be wealthy is not the key driver for hard work. And, of course, growth for catch up is not necessarily the only goal of a development plan.

The interesting thing about Amartya Sen’s rational argument in Development as Freedom is that, indeed, that holds true even for emerging markets.

Amartya Sen (courtesy Wikipedia). He obtained his PhD in Economics in 1959 and after that took a four year fellowship in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was born in the same town as Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize laureate for Literature, who game him the name Amartya (Immortal).

Books by Sen. I own four of his books including The Argumentative Indian that I bought to try and understand my Indian classmates at AIM better.

The other books I have are Rationality and Freedom and The Idea of Justice, that I noted in the previous post above with Galbraith’s American Capitalism.

Professor Sen writes very well, like some of my Indian classmates, though Development as Freedom is quite compact and thus the few days gap after my last post before I could publish this one.

Famously, he writes his books not to advice authorities but to “enrich the conversation.” Coincidentally, that is also the raison for SYNTHESiST.

Final Words. For the modern age, Amartya Sen’s idea of freedoms (in its elements and interconnections) as the constitution and object of development is the just way going forward for citizens of emerging markets without the crushing load from the intercession of broker institutions.

I write this post as a companion to my previous post on Frederick Taylor, father of Scientific Management. Taylor’s methods engineering was the foundation knowledge that liberated many workers to wealth and entrepreneurship through the win-win sharing of productivity 100 years ago.

Amartya Sen’s ideas on expanding freedom and free agency may serve the same purpose in the 21st century, this time in unleashing the creativity and energies of the worlds many “UNFREE.”