„Humankapital“ as Misnormer 2004
The term „Humankapital“ has been selected as the Misnormer of the Year 2004 [Unwort des Jahres] by German jurors. Out of 1218 different proposals, the linguists and literates of Germany voted for the term „Humankapital“ to explicitly express the harsh discrepancy between the word itself and the describing matter. The term does not only degrade the work force of a country, but places all human beings into general and only economically interesting values. The nominations for the Misnormer of the Year exist since 1991 in Germany and reflect the current world events. Previous decisions brought the words „Peanuts“ (1995), „Tätervolk“ [committer nation] (2003), „national befreite Zone“ [national freed zone] (2000) oder „Gotteskrieger“ [God’s Warrior] (2001) to medial focus.
Above can be understood as a summary of the information found in the (more or less) official press release. My personal definition of „human capital“ is similiar to a thought of Prof. Dr. Mike Friedrichsen on Medienmanagement. He mentioning the term „human capital“ during his summary of our lecture on normative, operative and strategic management. There we figured even jokingly, once we justify ourselves as being inherited with human capital, we must consider this as being the most important factor for our personal advancement and enrichment. We may not rely anymore on our aggregated value added found in assigned values of our daily life, but should concentrate on our skills and knowledge found in our mental abilities, inner strength and skill of the mind. Once we distinguish between the specific and general human capital, all skills or knowledge is useful only to a single employer whereas general human capital is useful to all employers.
Thank you for the reminder. I probably made a mistake while expressing the information found in the linguists‘ and literates‘ reasoning instead of clarifying my own position. But in order to express my own point of view, I have added a few thoughts above.
Thanks for the post on human capital, but I have to disagree. Human capital is a vital part of modern economics. As the traditional factors of production begin to show their age (capital is cheaper than ever, labor is more varied than ever, and land is less relevant than ever) „human capital“ captures important information about the new economy. More and more every individual is a factor of production. The rise of superempowered supereducation individuals, from everything to the great rise of the service sector to the „Army of One“ advertising campaign, shows the need to focus on the individual aspects of economic development.
It does not „[place] all human beings into general and only economically interesting values,“ but it does highlight the economic potential of every individual human being. That is something to celebrate!