about competences - the 3 actors

The three actors; private sphere, work sphere, society sphere

There are three actors that have a stake in building your competence, and using it to achieve their respective goals. Let's have a closer look at the private, work and society sphere. Each of those spheres has an actor, has an end goal, and has interest in developing and using competent people to reach that end goal.

Private sphere: the pursuit of happiness

The private sphere or private life in western thinking will mean you, the individual. You are the actor here. In other parts of the world, private sphere might be more conceived as family or tribe. I'll just assume that the actor in the private sphere is you.
What is the goal of yourself as an individual in life? What do you want out of life? I feel this is best described with the words found in the declaration of independence of the USA. "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." What you want is the pursuit of your happiness. Every individual will give a different interpretation as to what the pursuit of their happiness is, and it might change over the course of your life. Some will find their happiness in starting and raising a family. Some will find it in creating art that will stand the test of time. Some will find it in contributing to science, in protecting their country, in extreme sports, in religion, in starting up or leading a company, in teaching others, in having a lot of sex, in being smart, in reaching for the stars either in Hollywood or at Cape Canaveral, in cooking delicious food, etc. Maslow has created a pyramid with a hierarchy of needs. For most people in the west, the pursuit of their happiness is concentrated on a form of self-actualization.
So why do you need competences? First of all, you as an individual have all interest in having valuable competences, as that will lead you to an income. Most pursuits of happiness involve some level of income. But whatever will make you happy also requires competence, so that is the second good reason for being interested in building your competences. Some of them might not have market value or a lot of esteem or economic value, but they are important to you because they allow you to better achieve your end goal of happiness. A lot of examples of hobbies come to mind. People, considered 'amateurs' show extreme passion and dedication to their hobbies, as it links directly to what they want out of life. With the rise of the internet and social sites where people can talk about and upload their own work, we have witnessed much more than before how competent 'amateur' people can be in making videos on YouTube, uploading their photographs on Flickr, making programs and websites, publishing their own books, etc. So for you as an individual, you build competences because they enable your happiness.

Work sphere: profit / service
The work sphere means your professional life. The actor here will be your employer, embodied by an organization like a small firm, a big corporation or a public service. You might have a series of employers as you go move along your career path.
What is the end goal of your employing organization? There are two answers here. If your organization is a for profit corporation, then the answer is: money. The end goal of your firm is to generate profit by doing the activities it has chosen to do. Some organizations, like NGOs or government agencies are not working for profit. For them there end goal is to render a quality service to their public.
Why is your employer interested in competences? Because there is an indirect link between the money (or quality service) and the competences it can call into action. Firms must accumulate the right pool of talent to be able to achieve their goal of value creation or service delivery. For corporations, the name of the game here is 'talent management'. As Peter Cappelli has written in his book 'talent on demand', the concern for a corporation is to match the demand of talent with the supply of talent. Too much talent that you cannot use or sell eats your profit away. Too little talent makes you unable to generate more profit or satisfy your customers. Corporations have 3 mechanisms to get the supply and demand of competencies match: they can build the competencies themselves via internal development programs, they can buy the competencies they need on the labor market by hiring someone away from a competitor or from school, or they can temporarily hire a competency via contractors and temp agencies. Sensible corporations will do the ideal balance of all three.

Society sphere : prosperity here
The society sphere means your public life. Today, the actor of society is the government of the nation/state. In times past, it would have been a city or region embodied by a ruler.
What is the goal of a nation? I'd like to phrase it as 'prosperity... here, for us'. A nation wants to prosper, wants to grow in number, richness and influence. But there is something quite selfish attached to it. Nations will look out for their own interest first. That used to be very clear here in Europe where nations would fight bloody wars, some lasting over a 100 years. (OK, with intervals, I'll give you that.) Flanders, where I live has been occupied by a lot of others: we have been ruled by the French, Germans, Spanish, Austrians, Romans, Dutch,... In modern times nations have come to understand that working together will bring more prosperity to all, instead of trying to take it away from each other. But the end goal hasn't changed, nations still want 'prosperity for us', but luckily by far more peaceful means and cooperation than centuries ago. Governments are primarily interested in the factories and firms on their territory only, taking care of their own voters/population. As for the pursuit of happiness of the individual, the prosperity for a nation can be interpreted differently, and is usually colored by politics.
Why is a government interested in building or using competences? All of the ways that lead to prosperity involve competent people, whether you travel your road to prosperity through trade, power, religion, manufacturing what you are best at, etc. Governments also need money to provide public service such as ensuring justice, order, security, health care etc. Some governments need a lot of money to pay for a lot of public services, some need less to provide a minimal service. They get that money from taxing individuals and corporations on the income (value) they earn. So as a nation you have every interest in having a population that generates enough value for you as a government to tax away. In terms of competence, governments act as a 'bank' for competence development of their citizens. Individuals on average do not have the means to invest in their competencies fully themselves. So the government pays for that as a 'loan' that gets paid back in the taxes on the income from the fruit of the collective competences of its citizens.
Governments also solve the 'free rider' problem when it comes to competence building. Why would an institution or corporation invest tons of money in developing someone, just to see them walk away without penalty to another corporation at an unpredictable time before the investment has paid back? They would all just wait for others to make the investment, and then hire away. In most nations the government takes on the role of laying a competence foundation through mass (thus cheap) education. Corporations tap into that competent labor market.

Key point: there are three actors involved in building and using competencies : you, your employer and your government. Each has their own goal for with competencies are important.