The Era of Imam Mahdi the New Global

Leisure Demand

Leisure is the core component of a person's well-being, as he earns and spends time to enjoy this phenomenon which increases her pleasure from life. Conventionally leisure is taken to be the residual term from a utility maximizing (which is money metric) behavior of a consumer, where he determines the labor supply commitment and the left over is the time for leisure and consumption. In this case the leisure is taken as a commodity, which is bought back by paying a price (wage), hence it becomes a kind of an opportunity cost and taken as an expenditure.

This is the conventional approach, in our analysis we take it from the perspective that there is a committed leisure requirement and then over and above that is the consumer choice problem.

As every individual is in a state of dynamic optimization i.e. maximizing one's happiness at each point of time considering the time and resource constraint and a planning horizon which goes beyond the current life on earth (Hamdani 2002, 2004, 2006). He has to obey certain natural and implicit social constraints for his lively hood.

Which are defined in the divine religions. He distributes his resources in such a manner, which is based on economic rationality as per conventional school of thought where as the Divine Economics school of thought proposes various committed (necessary allocations) and optional commitments basing on a life horizon which is infinite as well as the transformed outcomes value to one's well-being.

So in a total sense it is not the Material objectivity of life which ensures happiness There are certain behaviors, which encompasses those allocations, which doesn't have a direct impact on ones material well-being.

There could be other objective functions such as time metric utility function which can be used Now taking the utilitarian approach the quest of human being would be to maximize their living standards, and well-being which are classified as economic, social, religious and personal.

As revealed by Imam Moosa Kazim (A.S); these are; a) Moaash (Economic Livelihood), b) Moasharat (Social Livelihood), c) Monajat (Religious Livelihood) and d) Zaat (Personal livelihood)

Using Faith based model of Hamdani (2003), we can re-write the same as following:

The maximization process would be to:

Choose amounts of time and money resources (which can be converted totally in time if from income it is converted in no of hours involved) for Moash (Economic livelihood; market based earning activities; which includes objects depending on the stage of life and other circumstances, investment expenditure for human capital, other physical infrastructure, social capital, children education etc),

then for moashrat (Social Livelihood: society based allocation, which are not directly related to earning in the first period and may base on social norms, rituals and practices), then for Monajat (Religious Livelihood: purely for religious aspirations), then for Zaat (personal lively hood: which include family, his personal time for rest and other necessary doings, home production, food and other recreational consumption, etc)

Subject to:

Income (those resources which are generated un-worked, e.g. bequest, donation, saving, discount, subsidy, social capital returns, family providing support etc), and time constraint Which would give:

Over all maximum well-being rather then only metric utility or it's that utility function which includes all of the above arguments or the sum of maximised utility of moash, moashrat, monajat and zaat.

The budget constraint which is also linked with the time for moaash i.e. the total income resource could be written as Yi= vmi*tm+ un-worked income Where Yi is the total available income, vmi is the value of market time, usually taken as to be the wage rate, and tm is the total time allocated to the market for earning actitivyt.

Then the total value time constraint can be written as VT=Vi* 24= vmi*tm+vsi*ts+vri*tr+vzi*tz Where Vi is the average value per unit of time for ith individual, vsi is the value for time spent on societal activities for ith individual, ts is the time allocated for societal activities, vri is the value for time spent on religious activities for ith individual, tr is the time allocated for religious activities, vzi is the value for time spent on personal activities for ith individual and tz is the time allocated for personal activities.

Now we can solve this model for committed and non-committed time allocation. However the following needs to be taken into account while following that:

As noted by Hamdani (2003) the goods produced (converted in time metric equivalent) are taken with reference to their satisfying characters towards the sub objective functions explained above.

Further all the goods could be either substitutes or complements if they are taken with reference to time.

Similarly the sub-objective functions also have the same characters of being substitutes or complements.

As the objective is of time allocation so we don't use the commodity buying constraint, and that is also built in the time constraint as the earning and from zaat the consumption is there.

Depending on ones' religiosity or the faith developed, the choice bundle can vary and each time allocation bundle will carry different value to oneself .

Conventional stock of knowledge take these allocations as mutually exclusive, where as the true and divine source of knowledge reveals to us that investing time in a prescribed, natural way would not only lead to a rational and fair allocation of these resource but also lead to a maximum potential level of ones' well-being (Imam Zain-ul-Abdin (A.S) in Iqwal-e-Chhardeh Masoomeen).

There would be a substitutability and complementarity relations in these resource allocations towards achieving the goal of maximizing the well being of individuals. These optimal choices are mostly complimentary if taken in a faith-based model (See Divine Economics Framework e.g. Hamdani 2003) and mostly substitute other wise.

One of the four parts of time allocation i.e. time for personal livelihood (zaat) development which, according to Imam Mosa Kazim (A.S), actually reinforces other set of allocations and thereby leads towards reaching a global maxima of individual happiness or satisfaction. As now the allocation of their time based normalized resources are in a dynamic and a life horizon model considering among other resource constraints; the environments he/she is present or has a tendency to develop in future, such as Human Environment (which includes Nature, type and quality of human beings around the individual in perspective of their knowledge, skills, behaviors, faith, moral values, beliefs and associations). This model is developed in order to explore the following hypothesis:

  1. A more religious person would tend to develop a human environment which is futuristic; Time allocation of a more religious person would be more balanced

  2. Longer Prostration reduces biological need for rest and sleep thereby sparing time for other allocations, thus have macro implication Data and methodology Divine economics Model for leisure based on Hamdani (2003), would be used. Which is described as For present analysis the Divine Economics Survey-VI; Survey of Religiosity and Rehabilitation Patterns in Earthquake Affected Areas of Pakistan & AJ&K (2006) for 764 households in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan conducted by Harvard University is used.

Estimation results Table10.4: Mean Time Allocation Earthquake Before After Moash (Economic livelihood) 7.66 7.13 Moasharat (Social Livelihood) 2.85 3.10 Voluntary Time 0.72 0.95 Monajat (Religious Livelihood) 2.04 2.18 Zaat (Personal Livelihood) 9.49 9.06 The quest of human being is to maximize their living standards; whether they are Moash (Economic Livelihood), Moasharat (Social Livelihood), Monajat (Religious Livelihood) and Zaat (Personal livelihood).

A comprehensive analysis is required in the present situation to recommend policy measures. The mean time allocated to the above time uses, by the respondents has been changed after earthquake. The time allocated to economic livelihood has been reduced, while this time has re-allocated to social livelihood, Monajat and voluntary work. The personal livelihood time has also reduced while religious livelihood time increased. Our results show that almost 31% of the respondents almost daily discuss rewards and punishment of deeds with the human environment he is living in.

Further 85.4% do it on a regular basis. Where as almost 75% discuss even the futuristic religious variables, as a rationale faith based human beings they develop moral and other behaviors. The mean time allocated to the above time uses, by the respondents has been changed after earthquake. The time allocated to economic livelihood has been reduced, while this time has re-allocated to social livelihood, Monajat and voluntary work. The personal livelihood time has also reduced while religious livelihood time increased.

Conclusion

A very small set of socio-cultural-personal and religious dimensions for appreciating the Mahdaviat principles of an ideal human life were brought into economic analysis in order to make the subject of economics more closer to real life phenomenon of present time as well as the time to come. But clearly there is an ample need for developing our understanding and presenting to the world how practical in maximizing global welfare is the Mahdaviat era.

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