Across the whole spectrum of human endeavors, there are helping relationships wherein some helpers (e.g., doctors, teachers, social workers, advisors, managers, or organizers) try to help their counterparts (e.g., patients, students, clients, workers, and so forth) to help themselves. But there is a fundamental “helping self-help conundrum” in the very idea of helpers giving external assistance to others to become more autonomous, i.e., to become independent of external assistance.
A Fundamental Conundrum in Human Affairs
February 5, 2025 by admin
Filed Under: Classical Liberalism, Development, Main Blog Tagged With: Autonomy, Helping self-help conundrum, Rapacious benevolence, social engineering
Social Engineering vs. Pragmatism: Part I of Commentary on the Sarkozy-Stiglitz Commission
January 31, 2010 by admin
The point of this Part I commentary on the Sarkozy-Stiglitz Commission is to juxtapose the social engineering perspective implied in the whole exercise of trying to find a better index of “economic performance and social progress” to a more pragmatic perspective.
Filed Under: Main Blog Tagged With: cost-benefit analysis, Current events, Development aid, Economic Theory, John Dewey, Joseph Stiglitz, Political Economy, pragmatism, Sarkozy Commission, social engineering, social indices