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| Subtitle | Economics as if People Mattered |
| First Written | 1973 |
| Genre | Economics |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Harper Perennial |
| ISBN-10 | 0061997765 |
| My Copy | paperback |
| First Read | October 04, 2016 |
Small is Beautiful
This is a series of lectures or essays by Schumacher, and while some of his ideas have percolated into the mainstream, others still feel pretty radical. I read them in college first (self assigned, of course - no reading required for art school). But even re-reading them now, much of it still feels radical.
In general, Schumacher is arguing against the core tenets of Western economics: that efficiency is always good, that bigger is always better, that more is always better than less, that production and consumption is always better than conservation or abstention. It is at times eye-rollingly innocent, and at others a bit bracing.
Noted on October 24, 2016
I'm someone who builds 'efficient' software to help people get their job done better, and I participate in an industry that proudly says that 'software is eating the world.' I / We don't confront the question often enough: What if we ... didn't? What if software wasn't so voracious?
Schumacher's essay 'Technology with a Human Face' is particularly germane here, but he fleshes out the idea more in physical production of goods, because he's concerned with 'real' production. My reading of Schumacher is that he'd rather nearly all work done by software is eliminated altogether - that managers, analysts, accountants, etc simply drop out of the picture. His writing predates the idea of a 'service economy' or 'knowledge workers.' I want to find something useful here, but it's going to take more thinking.
Noted on October 24, 2016
Strange to say, the Sermon on the Mount gives pretty precise instructions on how to construct an outlook that could lead to an Economics of Survival.
- How blessed are those who know that they are poor: the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
- How blessed are the sorrowful ; they shall find consolation.
- How blessed are those of a gentle spirit; they shall have the earth for their possession.
- How blessed are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail; they shall be satisfied;
- How blessed are the peacemakers; God shall call them sons.
It may seem daring to connect these beatitudes with matters of technology and economics. But may it not be that we are in trouble precisely because we have failed for so long to make this connection? It is not difficult to discern what these beatitudes may mean for us today:
- We are poor, not demigods.
- We have plenty to be sorrowful about, and are not emerging into a golden age.
- We need a gentle approach, a non-violent spirit, and small is beautiful.
- We must concern ourselves with justice and see right prevail.
- And all this, only this, can enable us to become peacemakers.
Quoted on October 24, 2016
Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again. And this insight does not come easily to people who have allowed themselves to become alienated from real, productive work and from the self-balancing system of nature, which never fails to recognise measure and limitation. Any activity which fails to recognise a self-limiting principle is of the devil.
Quoted on October 24, 2016
Some people ask: "What happens when a country, composed of one rich province and several poor ones, falls apart because the rich province secedes?" Most probably the answer is: "Nothing very much happens." The rich will continue to be rich and the poor will continue to be poor. "But if, before secession, the rich province had subsidised the poor, what happens then?" Well then, of course, the subsidy might stop. But the rich rarely subsidise the poor; more often they exploit them.
Quoted on October 24, 2016
They freely talk about the polarisation of the population of the United States into three immense megalopolitan areas: one extending from Boston to Washington, a continuous built up area, with sixty million people; one around Chicago, another sixty million; and one on the West Coast, from San Francisco to San Diego, again a continuous built-up area with sixty million people; the rest of the country being left practically empty; deserted provincial towns, and the land cultivated with vast tractors, combine harvesters, and immense amounts of chemicals.
Quoted on October 24, 2016
We always need both freedom and order. We need the freedom of lots and lots of small, autonomous units, and at the same time, the orderliness of large-scale, possibly global, unity and coordination. When it comes to action, we obviously need small units, because action is a highly personal affair, and one cannot be in touch with more than a very limited number of persons at any one time. But when it comes to the world of ideas, to principles or to ethics, to the indivisibility of peace and also of ecology, we need to recognise the unity of mankind and base our actions upon this recognition. Or to put it differently, it is true that all men are brothers, but it is also true that in our active personal relationships we can, in fact, be brothers to only a few of them, and we are called upon to show more brotherliness to them than we could possibly show to the whole of mankind. We all know people who freely talk about the brotherhood of man while treating their neighbors as enemies, just as we also know people who have, in fact, excellent relations with all their neighbors while harboring, at the same time, appalling prejudices about all human groups outside their particular circle.
Quoted on October 24, 2016
Equally, people who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on world-wide systems of trade.
From the point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale.
Quoted on October 24, 2016
A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. It would be highly uneconomic, for instance, to go in for complicated tailoring like the modern West, when a much more beautiful effect can be achieved by the skilful draping of uncut material. It would be the height of folly to make material so that it should wear out quickly and the height of barbarity to make anything ugly, shabby, or mean.
Quoted on October 24, 2016