Bauer defined development as widening freely chosen options, not mere output growth

Evidence

In awareness of prevailing security concerns, Bauer suggested that he neither condemned all government economic assistance nor wanted to minimize the Russian threat. But planning would yield the opposite results of what was aimed for on the one hand, and development should not be reduced to growth, a simple increase of the volume of goods and services on the other: “It is an increase in goods and services that people want and have freely chosen,” Bauer argued, “it is a widening of human options. This kind of freedom is obviously jeopardized by systems of statist compulsion” (Bauer 1958a, 142). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1315

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bauer’s definition of development as widening of human options contrasts sharply with growth-based measures.
• XREF: Links to the broader neoliberal contrast between freedom and state planning central to Mont Pèlerin Society thinking. — connects to: 1950s development consensus focused on output growth without prescribing method. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 526