Economic Decision Making

Standard of Living & Infrastructure

• The central problem of any economic organization is …– How to provide a high standard of living for all

members of the society.

• Standard of Living is a measure of the consumption of goods and services that individuals and groups privately and/or collectively can achieve

• Standard of living indicators:– Income levels– Diets– Medical care– Safe water supply– Education levels– Choices available to citizens– Life expectancy

• How high is your standard of living?– Make a list of 20 fundamental things in your live

you would have difficulty living without?

– Use your list to complete the following chart

Which of these things Which make life easier Which could you actually are critical for survival live without

Every society has an ideal by which it strives to fulfill the needs of its members.

– Democratic, industrial societies believe they offer:• Material well-being• Social mobility• Individual autonomy

– Aboriginal societies believe they offer:• A sacred respect for the land and all living things• A way of life in which sharing economic wealth is a

benefit for all• The opportunity to be self-sufficient and contribute to

the groups well being

• Maintaining a high standard of living means making difficult choices about:– Deciding what a high standard of living is– How to organize society so that the necessary

goods and services to support that standard can be produced efficiently, cheaply, and humanely

– How to distribute those goods and services to all who want them in a way that is satisfactory to the majority

• In a small group brainstorm and come to a consensus on the following …– What is a satisfactory standard of living?– How can you produce what is needed?– How will you distribute what you need?

* Share your group decisions with the other groups *

• Modern, industrial societies are made possible by an infrastructure that determines the social system.– An infrastructure is defined as the complex system

of political, economic, and social organizations

• The purpose of an infrastructure is to make possible the production of goods and services necessary to satisfy human needs and wants.

• Every society develops an infrastructure which is unique to its environment and needs as defined by the cultural assumptions which govern how people in the society view reality.

• Comparing standards of living within and between societies is difficult and must be done with regard to the criteria selected.

Economic Paradigms of North American and European Societies• All people choose and/or accept patterns of

ideas, beliefs, and values known as paradigms.

• Paradigms provide a set of rules and regulations which can be used as criteria for deciding what is real, acceptable, and/or significant.

Iroquoian Economic Paradigm

• Aboriginal peoples over the course of thousands of years created economic systems compatible with their values and beliefs.

• Economic life was integrated into the other aspects of the lifestyle, including the religious and the political.

• The economic systems of most traditional societies were heavily dependent upon the physical environment and the natural resources obtained from it.

• These societies were guided by community-based economic development systems in which men were the natural resource gatherers and women the natural resource processors.

Iroquoian economic life:– Attached a cultural value of sacredness to the physical

environment and everything within it– Controlled any tendency toward unlimited and/or

unmanaged economic growth– created economic systems which were grounded in

spirituality– Acted as the spiritual guardians of the physical

environment– Governed economic activity by placing a high priority

on the management and conservation of natural resources

• In summary, the Iroquoian economic paradigm was based on:– Collaboration– Integration– Sharing– Conservation– Matriarchy