The Tension of the Concept of Human Capital and the Evolution of Its Scope of Investment in the Creative Economy Times

Abstract

The current economic theory suggests that human capital is the human ability, separating human as a carrier from human capital. However, the phenomenon of mixing the two definition of human capital existed in the history of economics and not until 20th century was the human ability fixed as human capital. Research shows that defining human ability and skills as the concept of human capital is a product under certain historical condition, and the separation of human, a carrier, and human ability is based on the ethical constraints, which is a compromise under the economically underdeveloped stage. However, a person is eventually a whole person--not only has the knowledge and skills but also the emotion which means both of them cannot be simply separated and with the arrival of the era of creative economy, the traditional concept of human capital reveals its intrinsic tension. Based on the point view of humanism, the result of theoretical analysis indicates that human capital is the people as a whole and the essential characteristic of human capital is humanity (i.e. the unification of nature and social) which has different representation along with the time vicissitude. Therefore, the human capital investment will be a task using humanity within the era of creative economy, having a broader scope of investment, including the investment in materialized ability and spiritual aspects of people. Moreover, it will concern people's experience and feeling in their work. Due to the misunderstanding of system and concept, human capital investment in spiritual aspects has been depressed seriously for a long period of time. Therefore, currently, the increment of the human capital investment in the spiritual aspects while making reasonable allocation of human capital investment portfolio, possesses effects of increasing marginal revenue, which will consequently contributes to the realization of Pareto Improvement.