In Martha Nussbaum's new book, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, she writes of the necessity to look beyond measuring a country by its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that refers to the market value of all financial goods and services produced within a country in a given period. Mostly she explained this approach could not work because of a lack of equal distribution. Instead, Nussbaum pushed the idea of measuring a country instead by its Human Development Index (HDI), which looks at a broader range of "human capabilities"such as individuals' education, health, etc. For a more in-depth discussion of GDP v GDI pros and cons, check out http://www.nationmaster.com/article/Gross-Domestic-Product-vs-Human-Development-Index

In looking at the chart below, one can better understand Nussbaum's argument that simply because a country has a high GDP does not guarantee that all of its citizens are reaching their full capabilities. Quite often, as in China, the countries high on the GDP listing don't even make the top 10 of HDI lists.

Creating Capabilities broke down human capabilities into 10 major groups: life, bodily health, bodily integrity, senses, imagination and though, emotions, practical reasons, other species, play and control over one's environment (both political and material). 

Nassbaum's book focused on the idea that we should all have opportunities to reach each of our individual capabilities, though achieving those capabilities is not necessary. For example, she argued that the state should protect a human's right to basic daily nourishment. However, if an individual chose to fast, for whatever religious of moral reasons, her argument would be they should be allowed that right as well, as a matter of personal choice. There's a difference between being forced to starve due to lack of food and choosing to fast out of personal reasons. This said, the state should not have the right to impose moral or religious practices of fasting on the people, because that would be harming their capabilities for both bodily heath and life. From her book I gleaned that the state should not be allowed to tell us how to live our lives, but should take the funds it has and do everything it can to protect our opportunities to follow our own choices. The state needs to give us the tool, we can in turn decide whether to use that tool to fulfill our needs or not. More often than not, these tools are going to require the state to dig deep into their spending pockets.

While I appreciated Nussbaum's ideas and whole-heartedly agreed with almost everything she put forward, she lost me a bit when she explained her take on education. She stated in Creating Capabilities that she believed the state should play a bigger role in providing education for both children and adults to develop their capacities to learn ideas such as logical reasoning, creativity, debate, and how to contribute to one's community. Got it.

 If applied to IHAD, we could say that instead surviving off of private funding, the program should be funded by taxpayer dollars. If the dreamers' schools alone could not provide them with the tools of education needed to fulfill all 10 of their human capabilities, then Nussbaum's theory seems to suggest the state make this program outside of the school systems picks up the slack. To take it one step further, there should be hundreds of other state-sponsored programs to educate people on how to fully explore all of their capabilities. Whether or not a state could afford such programs could play a part in determining its HDI.

Here's where I get confused. If I read it correctly, her book disagreed with the idea that some forms of art or beauty could be of a "better" or "higher" level than others'. She also stated there is no way of saying how one person's happiness or level of satisfaction with their achievable capabilities could be compared to another person's.

Did she not just argue that people of all ages should receive more state-funded education to learn that there some lifestyles and levels of happiness are higher than others? That people should strive to both find and achieve higher levels of happiness and capabilities than they previously knew they possessed? Shouldn't the state be teaching what is "good"? If the state did not teach that some forms of life are better than others, how are Nussbaum's ideas of increasing people's propensity for debate and creativity going to take place? If the state was not required to teach which ideas of beauty, happiness and justice were important, how would her approach be any different than the education that is currently being provided? The masses would still remain largely ignorant of the "bigger and better" lifestyle opportunities they were missing out on.

To fix this contradiction, what if the state was required to teach all different models of beauty, happiness, and life choices? Then people could receive all of their opportunities, and could have the choice to decide which paths, if any, they wanted to follow to reach their human capabilities. My parents applied that methodology to me, and I plan on using it to encourage the children I tutor. You want to be a doctor? Great! A hairdresser? Fantastic. As long as children (and adults) know they have the option and ability to do or have what they want,  I can assume Nussbaum's theory about the state helping people realize their capabilities would in fact be a great idea to strive for.