SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

E. F. SCHUMACHER

The Problem of Production

In the first chapter “The Problem of Production”, Schumacher argues that the modern economy is unsustainable.

He states that one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that ‘the problem of production’ has been solved. People are now saying for rich countries the most important task is “education for leisure” and for poor countries, the “transfer of technology”, and things are not going as well as it should is due to human wickedness. By constructing a political system so perfect that human wickedness disappears we could solve it. Actually, the system is bad but its bad mainly because of this erroneous view that problem of production has been solved. The people are in an illusion of unlimited power due to the astounding scientific and technological advancements and it is making the concurrent illusion of that problem of production is solved.

Also, people take GDP as directly correlated to human wellbeing, and we are inclined to treat everything that we have not made as valueless (even great philosopher Marx fell into this error). Humans are surviving until now even with such a bad system because we have such a vast amount of natural capital (fossil fuels, farmable earth etc.). But we are treating them as income items rather than capital. More than 90% of worlds energy requirement is satisfied by fossil fuels, though we say we are in nuclear age the best players like USA still substitute only 0.3% of total energy consumption with nuclear energy. Who will still say that the problem of production is solved if we are to use income fuels at a global scale?

We need to understand the problem and start to see the possibility of evolving to a new lifestyle, with new patterns of consumption and production. We should interest in ourselves of building non-violent small-scale technology.

Buddhist Economics

“spiritual health and material wellbeing are not enemies: they are natural allies”

In wester economics the ideal point of view of the employer is to have output without employees and ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.

The Buddhist pos takes the function of work to be at least threefold:

to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to

enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task;

to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.

Its viewed that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

The western economy shifts the emphasis from the worker to product of work, but the very start of Buddhist economic planning would be a planning for full employment.

Western economy measures ‘standard of living’ by the amount of annual consumption, but in Buddhist way 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. From Buddhist pov production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life. This is also the Gandhian philosophy.

Question of Size

Schumacher explains that big is not always the best. There are lots of small countries which are the wealthiest among us. Poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses.

The Need for intermediate technology.

Poor are getting poorer while richer getting richer!. Mass scale production and capitalist ideal is the culprit.

The author suggest that, workplaces should be created in the areas where people live they should be less capital intensive production methods should be simple, demanding fewer high skill labour production should be from local material and mainly for local use

This is only possible with a regional approach to development and applying what might be called an intermediate technology. An intermediate technology is a less capital-intensive tech. Say traditional tech is 1 pound tech, and mass production tech is 1000 pound tech, but if we can devise a 100 pound tech it will be more effective than 1 pound tech and less cap intensive than 1000pound tech so that it can be used on a regional level.

In conclusion, bigger is not better, mass production is not the solution for poverty but production by the masses. We should aim to obtain the maximum amount of well-being with the minimum amount of consumption