From Big Picture TV (www.big-picture.tv)…

Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean economist widely respected for his work on international development. In 1981 he wrote the book for which he is best known, “From the Outside Looking in: Experiences in Barefoot Economics.” It describes his experiences practising economics “as if people matter” among the poor in South America. In that same year he founded the Centre for Development Alternatives (CEPAUR). He is currently Rector of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia.

Educating Economists (5m 35sec)
Manfred Max-Neef believes that economics taught in most schools nowadays is at odds with the realities experienced by vast swathes of the global population. Taught in isolation from other schools of economic thought, modern economics calls itself a value-free science. But how can a discipline that measures human behaviour not take into account human values or emotional motivations? Professor Max-Neef argues that reform is needed, suggesting that economics students spend part of their studies living in an impoverished community. Only there will they understand economic activity as engaged by the world’s poor.
Link: http://www.big-picture.tv/index.php?id=91&cat=&a=263

Development Economics (3m 29sec)
Manfred Max-Neef suggests that economists are too fixated with growth. As a result, they often overlook the qualitative values associated with human development. Whereas growth is quantitative, development relates to well-being, happiness and self-satisfaction – values which can be hard to measure. Max-Neef reminds us that while measurement is essential, we mustn’t believe that only that which can be measured exists.
Link: http://www.big-picture.tv/index.php?id=91&cat=&a=264

In Praise of Slow (3m 50sec)
Max-Neef contemplates how everything is a trade-off. However, we all too often give up the pleasurable things in life in the name of efficiency. In a world that demands that more must be achieved in less time, Max-Neef believes we should try to rediscover the virtues of slower living. Cologne’s Cathedral took some 500 years to build and still stands almost as many years later. In his view, it is a fitting reminder as to what can be achieved at a leisurely, inefficient pace.
Link: http://www.big-picture.tv/index.php?id=91&cat=&a=265

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