Manfred Max-Neef, Father of "Barefoot Economics" - Keynote at Zermatt Summit 2012
Channel: Zermatt Summit Foundation
Date: 2012-06-22

How to move from the current crisis to a stable economy ?
Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean-German economist in the field of international development. His most important books are: "From the Outside Looking In; Experiences in Barefoot Economics" and "Human Scale Development".
 originally published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

Both books seek to counter the logic of economics with the ethics of wellbeing.His latest book: Economics Unmasked" is a profound critique of mainstream economics. He has worked for several UN agencies and between 1994 and 2002 he was Vice Chancellor of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. In 1983 he received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize).

He holds honorary doctorates from Jordan, Colombia, Argentina and the United States, and has been recipient of the University Award of Highest Honour from Japan. At present he is the Director of the Economics Institute at the Universidad Austral de Chile. Member of the Club of Rome, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the New York Academy of Sciences.

EXCERPT
"thank you
very much I would like to start with a
very brutal statement and it is that I
believe that neoliberal economics which
has conquered the entire world
backed by most politicians and corporate
people is killing more people than the
armies put together let me give you just
one terrifying at least I consider that
a terrifying figure starting in October
2008 when the big crisis began in about
a few weeks we reached about 17 trillion
dollars to bail out and to save the
speculators who had created the crisis
if you divide 17 trillion by the amount
that FAO had indicated was necessary to
overcome hunger in the world which
according to FAO was thirty thousand
million dollar a year if you divide the
17 trillion by 30 thousand million what
you get please is six hundred years of a
world without anger where was that money
I worked with the United Nations many
years with FAO and ILO and I have never
been a mainstream economist but even so
I was honestly convinced
unfortunately there were not enough
resources to really solve hunger in the
world
and all of a sudden I discovered that
there was money for 600 years without
Hank well if that is not a scandal I
don't know what a scandal could be
terrifying things are happening right
now the fact that for instance in Spain
today more people die because of suicide
than because of traffic accidents it's
terrifying and what's the reason behind
that what is happening with the
so-called economy and similar things are
happening of course where suicide has
increased dramatically like in Greece
and in Italy and of course we know what
the recipes are that are given to those
countries the first was for Greece well
first of all you have to dismiss 250,000
people Jesus that sounds very simple you
dismiss 250,000 people but nobody's
thinking that you are generating 250,000
personal tragedies but that has no value
whatsoever in economics today it's
meaningless much more important than
250,000 personal lives
it's a macroeconomic indicator and if
that improves our then everything is
justified and everything is fine well
that is the context in which were living
and it was in that context that I want
to share what I proposed and believe the
increasing concern about sustainability
and it's different approaches
interpretations indicators and
strategies is the result of the way in
which economics has evolved as a
discipline there is a direct correlation
between sustainability as a
preoccupation and the imposition of the
neoliberal ideology of the dominant
economic model before 1970
sustainability had not even emerged as a
concept"