I like to think that words matter. They’re the basis of civil society, after all.
It was about 2003 that people became “consumers.” I remember marking the change in usage when I listened to CBC news broadcasts.
There was a brief period when “demographic” jockeyed for position, but “consumer,” a less confusing term with easier usage rules, held its place. It beat out all other comers, and “consumer” is definitely the most common term used to refer to people these days.
A couple of weeks ago a report from the B.C. Progress Board came across my desk with the arresting title “Human Capital and Productivity in British Columbia.”
To me, the term “human capital” sounded a lot like “human cattle,” making the title sound like it could have come from hungry aliens looking to put humanity to work before we were turned into manburgers.
But no, it wasn’t aliens who came up with the term, it was economists. According to Wikipedia, “human capital is the stock of competences, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labour so as to produce economic value.” Basically, human capital equates to the skill and education a person possesses. Also according to Wikipedia, although the term was coined in 1954, it wasn’t used until later “due to its negative undertones.”
Both terms “consumer” and “human capital” seem kind of dehumanizing in the way that could lead to meat patties; if you don’t have much capital as a human, maybe you’ll have more as a value meal.
But the aim of the B.C. Progress Board isn’t to flip burgers, it’s to calculate the quality of living found in the province and find ways to increase it. That sounds like they’re trying to see how happy everyone is, right? And that is their lofty aim; so what did their research tell them could be done to increase happiness?
As a vision for the B.C. economy, it looks like the B.C. Progress Board sees a white-collar university-based information economy striving for endless “economic growth.” The board states that its aim is for a well-educated population, but “well-educated” appears to be a university education. That seems like a pretty limited view of education.
Going to university and college is a unique experience, where the learner enters a special environment filled with people steeped in knowledge and keen to explore their world. I loved my university classes, classmates and professors, but it was an education focussed on only a couple kinds of learning.
There are large and legitimate realms of knowledge being collected and distributed outside universities available to anyone willing to learn. At university I learned about reading and writing, but in kitchens across the country I learned the art of baking, and out in fields of grass and flowers I learned about the incredible life of bees. A well-rounded education means going out and pursuing what engages and intrigues you.
And that is where the quality of life can actually be found, in the realization that every moment can be an opportunity to learn.
Defining learning as only valuable in terms of its “human capital” is as bad as referring to people as “consumers” whose existence is only remarkable in terms of the market. Equating learning solely with productivity leaves the joy out of the equation, forgetting what quality of life is actually about: happiness.
Whether Premier Christy Clark’s motivation to replace the B.C. Progress Board recently with a new Jobs and Investment Board was the term “human capital” remains a mystery.
