Adam Smith says that people use their time to meet their wants and needs, and that is the basis of the wealth of a nation.

Max Neef says something similar, but it is said a little more profoundly.

I have said that people either use their time to meet their wants and needs directly, or they use their time to convert resources into the means to meet their wants and needs.

I’m not sure that is the whole picture:

• There are needs that are addressed by using time; sleep, education, governance. The resources required are nominal. This can be enhanced through Human Development.
• There are needs that are addressed by using time and resources – the resources come from, and wastes go to, natural capital; homeostasis, food, mobility. This can be enhanced through Technological Development.
• There are needs that are addressed by resources alone – these are from natural services; breathing air, gravity, sunlight. The time required to meet these needs are nominal in places that support human life. These can be degraded, and enhanced only with great difficulty.
• And there are needs that are addressed by neither time nor resources; love, respect of our peers, emotional work as a group, hope. These are addressed as a part of our other activities, but cannot neglected without causing harm.

Thus, governance is required to create hope, and labour for others is required to ensure we generate the respect of our peers. This is why institutionalization is able to meet the immediate physical needs of the inmates, but why kids in orphanages die from being un-loved.

It also explains the importance of those natural services. They can have no measurable economic value (since one cannot buy and sell gravity, for example), but that doesn’t mean they have a value of 0.  They must be protected from ‘development’, since degrading them in any way must cause more harm than good.

Engineers can address how efficiently people use their time and resources to meet their needs. We need to found a profession that addresses how effectively people meet their needs.