Talk:Human capital/Archives/2013

This is an archive of past discussions about Human capital. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

explain this to me more

--71.215.125.65 03:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)Could you explain this to me more?

trimmed

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)

Any "constructive" debate or agreement on what "the issues" are has to start somewhere. There are actually some pretty good explanations in there now of how different theories compete to explain the same things.

spamming

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)

That doesn't help that much. There's always going to be a high motive to spam an article about basic economic analysis.

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 once 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?

The slavery issue is dealt with somewhat now in individual capital, a term that is more objective than "slave" or "resources" or "talent" or "labour" because it's always and only about what's attached to the individual.

That deserves a note in the section now labelled "intangibility, portability"

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)

That may be true but "human capital" terminology is well established and it's mostly a question of knowing how to identify it's components, driving factors, and so on, in a way that recognizes individual capital value somehow, not just as "labour" or "resources" or social or "intellectual" powers. This term seems to do that well.

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.

In his time you talked in a very classist way about "labour". But Smith did clearly refer to entrepreneurship, initiative, as a separate thing, but not so easy to quantify. That's what modern economists are doing in intangibles analysis, and individual capital is one of their solutions to the problem of labelling what's unique about individual capital. There still has to be an article about the whole debate, though, so keeping human capital separate is the best way.

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.

This is a very good observation - learning to use a shovel, practicing it, using it on behalf of someone as a social obligation, all show how human capital can interact with tools and tasks without money involved at all.

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.

All the more reason to differentiate individual capital as an economic view of talent, because that's whats valuable when labour is free, intellect is cheapened by AI, celebrity and social relationships arise for no discernable reason.

I correct this theory by saying that hamburgers actually originated in Hamburg, Germany. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.46.95 (talk) 00:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

There will never be a time where no human labour is required. Who will install this capital equipment? Who will maintain the capital equipment? Who will fix it when it becomes broken? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.173.12.152 (talk) 11:23, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

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)

These are great observations that belong in the individual capital article, which has insufficient sources right now - moving to talk:individual capital for now

Does Education Raise Productivity, or Just Reflect it?

Yu Zhu, Arnaud Chevalier, Ian Walker, Colm Harmon all seem to be sufficient authorities to cite if not worthy of their own Wikipedia bios.

Interesting tidbit

Not sure where this would be relevant in the article, but I came across it and thought it would be interesting. (quoting the relevant passage here, since the source is probably not available online)

The notion of human capital also has, however, a negative and mechanistic connotation. Specifically the dehumanizing implication of "human capital" led Germans to confer the dubious honor on humankapital as the most unpopular word of the year 2004.
— Fladrich, Anja M. (2006). "Graduate Employment in China: The case of Jiujiang Financial and Economic College in Jiangxi". China Information. 20 (2): 203.

rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this what Carl-Henric Svanberg was talking about when he called us "the small people"?76.173.44.154 (talk) 19:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Answer to the question merge or donot merge these articles.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was do not merge with Individual Capital. -- Tmol42 (talk) 19:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge the aricles, human capital is an important (economical and sociological and educational) item and needs a place in wikipedia. The item "personal capital" could have a link to human capital, because personal capital is viewed as a special view on Human Capital.

So I vote for merge personal into Human Capital. JaapB (talk) 18:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you actually understand the proposal? The article's title is individual capital not "personal capital". There is no article by that name in the English Wikipedia [1] nor seemingly should there be, as no one has used that term even as a subsection name in any of the human capital articles. Of course the whole subject is important and there are many perspectives on it. Higher education for instance is all about high investment in particular individuals, without much regard to their "labour" or "social" skills. Shoving all that into the human capital article is going to get it eviscerated by financial capital experts who use (abuse?) the term in their technical "balanced growth" curves.

Also what is your source for this statement:

personal capital is viewed as a special view on Human Capital

And why do you capitalize "Human Capital" as it it were a proper noun? Are you selling something? Your argument to merge seems inane, so please explain your rationale again.

Hello, according to Paulsen and Smart (2001) Book: The finance of higher education: Theory, Research, Policy, and Practice ISBN 0-87586-135-0 human capital can be identified as the productive capacities – knowledge, understandings, talents, and skills – possessed by an individual or society. This means personal capital is not the same as human capital. Personal refers to just one person. So, no. Merger is not a good solution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.55.232.44 (talk) 02:39, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Could you please provide web links to these references, you are clearly referring to this book with this review that seems to establish its credentials. The authors, Michael B. Paulsen, [2] and John C. Smart [3] (not to be confused with J._J._C._Smart who is a different person, again seem to justify citation and the use of the term.

---

The only identified problem with the individual capital article, its lack of references, seems to have been resolved with all these contributions, so the merge seems premature. Let the material in the references filter its way into the article and see what happens. For now we'll leave the merge proposal up but after two years with no decisive argument to merge, it should disappear soon probably. We'll see what other editors make of the references added.

Long over due closure of this discussion which did not result in any change.Tmol42 (talk) 19:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Inconsistency

The section about the origins of the term refers to a quote by A.W. Lewis in 1954 and then states that the term was not used until Arthur Cecil Pigou used the term. T human capital he citation of Arthur Cecil Pigou uses a date of 1928... I don't want to delete this part since I still have to do further research, but this does not help Wikipedia's credibility. Whoever wrote this, please fix the dates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.55.232.44 (talk) 02:25, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

This strange claim about origins seems to be gone now.

First sentence wrong

"Human capital to the stock of competences, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value." - not valid english grammar. What is that meant to be? "Human capital is? --07:58, 13 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Irrevenant (talk • contribs)

Someone with a poor grasp of the fact that "human capital" is a catch-all term without an operational definition must have written that.

Educational assignment at Symbiosis School of Economics supported by Wikipedia ambassadors

Basic.atari (talk) 14:44, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

DYK nomination

Comment protocol: merge arguments belong together

Just for the record. I have just reverted some edits by an anon IP who not only deleted other editors' comments here but also transfered in comments from other editors I think from the Individual capital Talk Page. The IP also added a load of unsigned comments in between others' previous edits which were impossible to distinguish so these have been removed also.Tmol42 (talk) 16:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Repaired. Your account is incorrect: No other editors' comments were deleted. Rather, I edited some comments that I had made myself in error thinking this was talk:individual capital. You can see the IP numbers are the same. Second, the individual capital page itself directs the merge comments to this page, which is where they belong according to the merge template. Moving them is normal practice: merge comments belong on the talk page of the article where the merge is proposed to, as the link correctly directs. We certainly don't want the in more than one place as it obscures the real count.

Regarding your other objection, an inline comment response was added to an existing comment, which has been restored (it challenges the validity of the "merge" argument by a person who does not seem to know the name of the article that is being merged). No confusion of two people's texts is intended and is not likely given that one POV strongly challenges the other.

My only changes to other editors' texts were harmless copyedits: linking Michael Spence and replacing "the term" with "the term human capital" for clarification for persons who arrive at this page from the link at individual capital. Both are harmless, helpful, and in no way change the sense of the comment, but to answer your concern about not letting this become a habit, both of those changes are undone in this version of the talk page.

Finally your revert removed good live links to the references others had provided, which is far more damaging than any of the edits you object to. Please take more care with references. Similarly the references were restored at talk:individual capital for those trying to improve that article.

Your objection there, which was to moving comments not originally directed to that page, has been dealt with by summarizing the comments, thanking the original contributors by name, and avoiding any impression that the dialogue took place on that page not this one. Hopefully this is a good compromise?

Firstly, you probably did not realise it given your drastic changes but you did delete other editor's comments and even in your subsequent edits when you moved previous edits into a new section on which you then commented, the format of these editors' comments was changed. I have just restored these such that your supplementary comments on them are still next to then. I have also repaired my last edit, which you did not restore properly, and moved this section back to the bottom of the page.

I didn't notice that and after examination still do not see what specific words were deleted. Changing format is not of such great concern but OK, thanks for fixing that, and if I failed to restore anything you said then apologies.

Secondly, although merge discussion banners had been added, where historically some editors added comments elsewhere possibly before tha banner was put up you should not pick and choose ones to move here as the original editor would not expect their edits to have been moved. Not all of them were about the merger anyway

You have removed that comment completely now, when it was clearly about the proposed merger. It had adequate attribution. But see below.

Thirdly. however, 'harmless' you think it is to adjust other editors' comments to improve their 'clarity' just don't do it. The policy on changing, moving or juxtaposing other editors contributions is clear.

No real objection, though inserting "editor's notes" type comments that do nothing but clarify a pronoun is normal editorial practice. If there are people at Wikipedia who will take that as license to do other things, fine, it can be avoided, but it isn't inherently a wrong thing to do editorially.

Fourthly, as I have already responded elsewhere your totally chaotic editing made it impossible to tell what you had added in deleted or moved from elsewhere, so in such circumstances the correct thing to do was to revert to restore back to a 'clean version' and suggest the editor insert in a new section a revised edit.

Any "chaotic" issues were fixed in my most recent edit in my opinion. Except for deleting a comment clearly about the merger from the parallel page, which was legitimately moved, your new process is fine.

You have not signed any of your edits by including ~~~~ after each edit. This ensures other editors are clear you are the editor who added the comments and that they do not belong as part of another editor's contribution. This is still outstanding from your most recent edits and I suggest you add your signature to each of your comments.

I will now look into closing the merge discussion which is redundant. Tmol42 (talk) 20:51, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

If you close the merge discussion, then the missing comment you have deleted is basically irrelevant and can be archived with the others. If not, please restore it. That will end whatever issues remain. Please do make sure that links to references, or proper names of authorities, remain clearly visible though. Even if the merge discussions are summarized, any authorities that aren't already clearly cited in the article should be cited here.

Hi User talk:99.192.106.144 Please could you sign your individual comments which are interdisposed between others as explained above and requested on the Talk Page. Your repeated failure to do this is becoming very irritating. Also regarding the reference links embedded in the discussion on merger. I suggest if you want these to remain visable after I close the merger dicussion I suggest you copy these into a new section as I am not sure which are yours and therefore the ones you want preserved and frankly I am fed up tidying up the mess. copied from ips Talk Page.Tmol42 (talk) 22:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Dependent concepts

Three concepts that are very obviously notable and perhaps in Wikipedia under slightly different names: brand value (meaning the financial value of a corporate brand name as a capital asset), social resilience (sometimes called community resilience) and balanced growth (a strictly neoclassical technical financial concept of trying to balance labour versus other capital asset value gains, which has many deficiencies but shows up in so many papers it's very hard to ignore). These should all be redirects to the appropriate concept, or copyedits should put the more exact name of the article in their place.

Yeesh the article brand equity begins with "Another word for "brand equity" is "brand value"" but no one bothers creating the redirect. Should we, or change this article's link? The brand equity article shows up number one in Google by the way for "brand value".

Meanwhile balanced-growth equilibrium is a stub article, again showing up first in Google for "balanced growth"

social resilience seems to be a neglected topic in Wikipedia as searches [4] show tens of millions of hits but no Wikipedia article at all in the top 20 or so. There seems to be some debating about how related social and community resilience [5] is to ecological, etc. Strangely Wikipedia has social vulnerability, psychological resilience, family resilience, urban resilience, a general resilience (organizational) and resilience (ecology). The adaptive capacity article deals with social and ecological in one article but resilience does not. Seems there should be at least a social resilience disambiguation page.

Intro

The intro section is far too long. Ben Finn (talk) 18:09, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Still too long. It should be replaced by an introduction that summarizes the article per WP:LEDE, with the other information removed or incorporated into the article. --Ronz (talk) 00:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Mobility between nations

The section lacks citations, evidence, and could be biased. Evidence would be appreciated for the first paragraph in particular. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flowfournier (talk • contribs) 11:14, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

India Education Program course assignment

This article was the subject of an educational assignment at Symbiosis School of Economics supported by Wikipedia Ambassadors through the India Education Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{IEP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 20:20, 1 February 2023 (UTC)